Suri chuckled, flashing sharp teeth. She came to me, and pressed a dry, chaste kiss against my cheek. "Good luck. Don't die."
My mouth went dry. “You either.”
"What are you two so anxious about? Death is merely a discomfort for your kind." Istvan gave us a wan smile as he joined Vash and clapped him on the shoulder. "We will be at our positions, as will the others. May Solnetsi catch you in her wings should you fall."
"Indeed. Burna marladik, my children." Vash made a sign of benediction with one hand. "Now let’s go and whup some soggy undead ass."
We ran outside to find the Fort in a state of barely controlled panic, as noisy as it had been the first day we arrived. There were barely six thousand soldiers left, enough to fill the transports moored at the Skydock. Troops ran to their positions. Makeshift elevators transported the bravest of the brave to the battlefield: the riflemen who would man the third line of defense.
As we rushed up to the walls, two of the great Hussar-class warships and their Bathory-class escort sailed over the wall, their engines blasting a steady roar over the wail of horns, the shouts of soldiers, the creaking of wood. Catapults were wheeled into place. The sailors turned on searchlights and rushed to arm cannons, fuel shields, and prepare to bomb the shit out of the Napathu when they reached the field. I watched the ships: the dark-hulled Arpad split to the west with three flanking ships; the elegant Novara, which carried Admiral Gehlan, went to the center with six escorts.
“Karalti! To me!” I jumped to catch a wall, got a grip, then jumped up onto the crenellations above.
Karalti's trumpeting roar pierced all other sounds as she dove out of the sky, invisible until she passed through the beam of one of the searchlights. She made a pass in front of the soldiers descending to the ground, and cheers went up - intensifying as she dipped a wing and I leaped out. I caught onto the saddle like Spider-Man, waving to the whistling soldiers as we flew back around and up, where we got our first look at the army of the dead.
Monstrous. It was the only word for it. Zombies poured in from the shattered treeline like a carpet of ants, an unending tsunami of bloated bodies. Skeletons lurched, sprinted and stumbled behind the black wave of putrefaction, rats swarming around their feet. First came the fear – then the cold certainty of my training. Adrenaline had barely begun to make my heart pound when the strange battlefield calm descended over me. I gripped the haft of the Spear, straightening my spine until it was as hard as the hot metal in my hand. The weapon’s seams of red light intensified, and the blade flickered with a corona of scarlet fire.
Players couldn’t normally P.M most NPCs, but the Mass Combat window had a special channel that enabled communication with your officers. I set up my management windows in multiple virtual screens, locked them in view, and watched as the horde massed toward the first line of defenses. I took note of where everyone was. Suri and Vash were at the top of the Central Wall, stationed with the artillery. Istvan was at the Skydock with Zediwitz, staging the final evacuation. Rin and Viktor were in position at the dam. The zombies were closing in every second, nearly within range of the cannons. Six hundred feet… five hundred. “Fire at will.”
“OPEN FIRE!” The cry went up and down the Line behind us.
The front line of cannons exploded like a Mexican wave. The bitter odor of gunpowder stung my nose, and the air dragged at Karalti’s wings as their payloads exploded past us, striking the mob heading for the abatis line. The cannonballs sprayed into the endless mass of undead, blowing bloody furrows through the horde. Unfazed, more zombies flowed into the gaps left by their crushed comrades. The second line of cannons blew seconds after the first, sending more bodies flying into the air. I gripped the edge of Karalti’s saddle, watching intently as the zombies began to pile against the abatises, where their straight line broke and started to blob. As soon as the crowding reached critical mass and the first zombies began to push and climb the phalanx line of trees, I messaged Suri. “OPEN CATAPULTS!”
The trebuchets groaned as the counterweights swung, whipping out huge balls of flaming pitch across the field and smashing them right into the blobs of zombies who had gotten trapped by the trees. The squeals of burning vermin punctuated the battlefield din as the oil on the mud caught fire. Flames spread like a living thing, feeding hungrily on the mass of greasy struggling flesh. But just as before, more undead flowed in to fill the gaps, charging heedlessly across the field. The abatises were being shoved aside by the sheer number of bodies, zombies flowing through them like a liquid… and then tumbling heedlessly into the deep oil-filled trench just behind.
“Archers ready. Rifles ready. Lighting first trench in five seconds. Copy all.” Suri patched through.
“H and K copy.”
Karalti broke her hover to swoop back and down, flying back toward the Line. I clenched my jaw as the archers on the wall lifted their bows, aimed, and fired.
A cloud of flaming arrows lit the sky, arching and then raining down over the fragmenting barricades. Despite the fire, zombies and skeletons were now charging in over their crushed and impaled brethren. Cannonfire was keeping them at bay, pushing them back onto the oil-soaked mound just as the flaming arrows landed and set the entire trench ablaze. The first wave of undead became one enormous pyre as the oil and kerosene ignited. Zombies lost their forward momentum: a crush was building at the back as they stumbled head-long into the crematorium that consumed their vanguard. The piles of zombies belched black smoke into the sky - and as their fellows climbed over them anyway, explosions began to rocket across the field. Flaming corpse parts were blown everywhere, and the trench line collapsed completely as huge craters opened up in the mud.
“Woo-hoo barbeque!” I punched the edge of the saddle. “Okay, Tidbit - let’s do this!”
Karalti beat her wings as she reared up and let out a cry of challenge. The fire, explosions, and the sheer mass of the ongoing pile-up was turning the enemy back against itself. But no matter how many stumbled to their knees, burning, thirty more seemed to replace them. We joined with the 2nd Company Dragoons, and as we swept out over the field, the central part of the first barricade collapsed and a metric fuckton of [Skeleton Swordsmen] poured into the kill zone.
“How’s the evac going back there?” I patched to Istvan.
“Smoothly for now. Morale is good, but there is a lot of fear,” he replied. “We have five ships loaded, three in transit.”
“Good. Rin, how’s the dam looking?”
“It’s ready to blow!” She replied. “I’m starting to think we can do this! (o^-')b”
The zombies and rats had been the vanguard - the real army was following behind, and there were some units we hadn’t seen before. Undead dogs, thousands of them, eyeless, their gaping maws drooling green-tinged foam. A line of T.rex lumbered through the trees, swinging their heads to clear their path. They crushed friend and foe alike under their huge feet on their way toward the second trench line. Behind them rode shrieking double-line of [Lalassu Chargers], spectral warriors galloping their ghostly hookwings between and around the dinosaurs like a tidal wave of deadly mist.
“Fuck!” I quickly input my orders to the Dragoons on the menu and used the HUD to highlight the wraith cavalry. “Suri, see those wraiths?”
“Vash is advising us how to handle the spooks. He says magic.” Suri replied.
“2nd Company RB Maegi, protect infantry flanks from the ghosts!” Karalti broadcast.
The quazi knights obeyed, splitting into three: the two wings carrying battle mages moved to flank the oncoming specters as they charged straight through the next line of barricades as if they weren’t there. The Lalassu Chargers leveled glowing incorporeal lances at the infantry behind the final line. The soldiers were desperately firing on them, but neither guns or arrows did any damage. Panic was starting to take hold.
“Hold your fire!” Karalti ordered, swooping in low. “Karalt’ba’nakh!”
I braced on her back, ready to jump as her wings cast t
he Lalassu Riders into shade. The dragon’s body pulsed with a wave of dark light, which sucked in against her skin and then exploded out in a sphere around us. The Shadow Wave swallowed four riders, who wailed and collapsed into smoke as the Dark magic unmade them. Others were injured enough that they veered off course.
“Well look at that! I think you spooked them!” I banged a fist on Karalti’s back.
“UGH.” Karalti groaned as she Split Turned and swung back. Laughing, I held the Spear out to one side and got ready to roll.
My Jump landed me right on the back of a Lalassu Charger. I drove the Spear down into its spectral saddle and pierced the heart of the ghostly hookwing it rode. It evaporated, dropping me to the ground. Others galloped by, mowing down screaming Riflemen like stalks of wheat. Whoever the lances touched turned to dust and collapsed, their remains drifting away on the wind. The Riflemen were defenseless, running in all directions as I vainly tried to kill the spectral cavalrymen. Stabbing and thrusting, discharging Umbra Blasts when I could and burning AP like no tomorrow, I couldn’t help them all alone. I saw a Charger leap onto a teenage soldier, its lance raised to strike just before bolts of boiling, translucent watery energy slammed into it and knocked it off its mount.
Quazi let out piercing eagle cries as they dived in formation, mages casting from their backs. Fire, Water, Light and Dark magic rained down on the Lalassu Chargers, who split and galloped back to try and reform. The aerial mages chased them down the battlefield, hounding them away from the infantry. Karalti swooped in and took another unit of them out with a second Shadow Wave, killing six with her AoE.
“They’re in retreat! Come pick me up!” The wave of zombies and skeletons was barely a hundred feet from us, clambering over the next line of barricades.
“Coming!” Karalti flew straight through a volley of arrows, bellowing as they clacked off her scales. Wings pumping, she came in low and snatched me off the ground. I held onto her foreclaw; when she let go, I swung around it like a mast and used Spider Climb to clamber up her body and back onto the saddle.
Undead spilled over the barricades like a liquid, falling straight into the pits of pitch below them. It was hard to believe, but our plan was working. The undead relied on cheap, expendable units, on overwhelming the Defense through sheer force of numbers, and this terrain was using their biomass against them. The zombies and skeletons were crushing each other, each wave making it more difficult for the ones behind. Towering stone and metal statues, visions out of some ancient Sumerian nightmare, tried to wade through the sea of corpses but become bogged down in the piling mountains of dead and burning zombies, leaving them easy pickings for cannons. The sheer number of bodies was staggering. Slowly but surely, they were getting closer.
“Fall back!” I screamed out loud and to Karalti at the same time. “Shield that infantry! Fall back!”
Arrows, bullets, and cannonballs were flying. Panting with effort, Karalti strove for altitude to avoid being struck. From above, I was able to see that the second line of defense was actually performing better than I could have hoped for. The riflemen and archers were picking off zombie after zombie, causing them to collapse over one another in a great big heaping pile. The Demon's infantry was forced to climb the hill of their own making or be crushed – and so I wasn’t surprised when Ashur’s army began pulling back, out of the kill zone.
[Your Militia Riflemen are now Rank 4!]
[2nd Company Ravensblood Dragoons are Rank 3!]
The undead were changing up tactics - bringing the zombies back, sending their heavies forward to smash the piles of corpses. They would flank around and come at the battlefield from the sides, trying to get to the manned bastions. Ashur had probably lost ten thousand infantry in ten minutes - a deep scratch on his army.
Zombie T.rex charged up the newly formed mounds, jaws gaping as they weathered arrows and rifle fire. Some of them were bristling like hedgehogs by the time they reached the bastions, where soldiers fired point-blank into the eyes of skulls of the skeletons they carried. The right flank of the undead were focusing their artillery on the third line of defense. Blue flashes flared out as groups of mages repelled the bulk of the impact with their shields, ricocheting deformed grapeshot and cannonballs back toward the teeming mass of undead. A squadron of Bathory airships were coming in from the side, ready to lay down fire across their ranks.
"Let's go back up those ships, Tidbit!" I dropped to a crouch.
"Wheee!" The dragon swooped down, almost skimming the fighting troops. She blasted a column of skeletons that were almost over the inward-curving defensive wall protecting the bastions, then pumped her wings to rise up toward the skirmishers. I nearly swallowed my tongue, giddy as we crested up beside them. Karalti winged around the bow of the Orozlan, giving a good fifty feet of clearance, and came to a stop in the air. Her neck reared, crests flared sharply in alarm as she swiveled her head around to face the south. "What was... oh no."
"What?" I held on as she hovered in place, following her line of sight. "What's the matter? Airships?"
"No, I thought... I felt..." she hesitated, and was just about to wing over when a chill wind suddenly whipped up from the wrong direction. Karalti brayed in alarm, flapping ungainly as she turned us around and began to beat her wings hard and fast, striving for altitude.
"What!?" I yelled, louder this time. I clung to the saddle with desperate strength. "Karalti, what-!?"
The dragons appeared with shocking suddenness. One second, the air was clear; the next, no fewer than twelve white, blue and silver dragons were just there, flying straight at us and the warships like torpedoes. Karalti's desperate reach for altitude became horrifically clear as the ships were pinned by lightning from all directions. Karalti emitted a piercing shriek of rage as the mana shields blew, the engines and sails caught fire, and every single ship lurched and then plummeted out of the sky, bearing their screaming crews to the ground far below. Even as the airships fell, the disciplined, experienced wing of dragons regained formation and chased us up into the air with Lucien and Violetta in the lead.
Chapter 45
I was too shocked to react. Shocked at the appearance of a full wing of Dragon Knights, here, on the opposite side of Artana. Shocked at myself for not predicting they would come.
“Lead them to the artillery, Tidbit!” I shouted aloud, clinging desperately as Karalti barrel-rolled to avoid a spit of lightning. It seared past us, crisping the air with the smell of ozone.
The wing of dragons split into two teams of six. The team lead by Violetta’s blue swung westward, where the warship Arpad and its Bathory-class escort were raining destruction down on the Demon’s archers. Lucien and his white flew for the much-closer Novara – the ship carrying Admiral Gehlan.
“By the Nine, how are these mongrels fielding TWELVE-WHORE FUCKING DRAGONS!?” The Admiral shouted on the Battle Management channel. “Shields, mortars, harpoons!”
The battle crew began firing on the dragons as they swooped down. Cannons boomed, and one brawny little silver dragon screeched as its wings shredded and it plummeted like a star to the seething battlefield below. Karalti cried out in distress. “No! My sister!”
“We can’t do anything to help them, Karalti!” I snarled. “Bioscan them! We need to know what we’re dealing with!”
“Okay!” She breathed the spell as we sped toward them from behind:
Solonkratsu (Dragon, Young Adult: Order of St. Grigori)
Sex: Female (Drone)
Level 6
HP: 2000/2000
MP: 100/100
Weak Against Gravity
Resistant to Light and Time
Dragon Knight (Order of St. Grigori)
Sex: Male
Level 14
HP: 1200/1200
Lucien and Violetta’s NPCs weren’t anywhere near as powerful as they were. I bared my teeth. “I’m sorry, Karalti. Let’s take out the humans if we can!”
A sorrowful moan was Karalti’s only reply. We d
escended on an unsuspecting silver from above, cloaked by the deepening darkness of the night. The Knight was crouched on the saddle like a windsurfer, intent on the destruction as bolts of lightning seared away the shields of one of the skirmishers and sent it plunging to the earth. Karalti’s jaws parted, drooling white fire that she spat venomously at the human’s back. He screamed, trying to spin around, but his saddle straps trapped him in place. The sticky Ghost Fire clung to his full-plate armor, cooking him alive. His dragon wailed as she broke rank, flying in desperate loops to try and put out the flames.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” I struck the edge of our saddle with a fist, feeling a dark, gloating presence leer from behind the mask of my face. But it was brief – Lucien’s enormous dragon broke through the blockade as another flaming Bathory-class plummeted to its doom.
“Hold on, Admiral! We’ll draw them away!” But even as I tried to reassure him, the massive, twisted bull dragon soared underneath the Novara, staying out of range of its weapons. He rolled in the air, jaws gaping, and blasted the underside of the warship with a continuous stream of glowing hot plasma. The Novara’s mana shields flared with brilliant blue light, then burst in a chain reaction of arcing energy that knocked several people off the decks. The other dragons swooped in, spitting lightning at the ship’s vulnerable wooden hull. A cannonball smashed right into the back of one of the whites, breaking its spine and sending it whirling to the ground in a limp, fatal spin. But only one. Within seconds, the Novara caught ablaze, explosions rippling through the great mana engines – and once they failed, it was over. The warship sagged, then toppled, scattering screaming people from the deck. Lucien and his monster pulled out of their lazy roll and spotted us by the light of the fires. I saw the blond son-of-a-bitch grin from ear to ear.
[You have lost a Hero: Admiral Constantin Gehlan]
[Army Morale has dropped! Militia Pikemen are at risk of Shattering!]
“Retreat!” I leaned my bodyweight the way I would on a motorcycle. Karalti moved with me, wheeling around on a wingtip as the mutated white dragon bellowed and leveled out on a course toward us. Two other blues followed him, shrilling out piercing cries of challenge. "Suri! Dragons on our six o'clock! Mayday mayday, turn your fire on our tail if you can!"
Kingdom Come Page 44