Five thousand shouts of joy echoed against the castle walls.
Then five thousand breaths were held as the black worms attacked the griffins –
Five thousand MORE shouts of joy as the abominations were dispatched.
It was a miracle – and the ray of hope that the golden-armored commander needed.
“THE GRIFFIN RIDERS FIGHT FOR YOU – WILL YOU NOT FIGHT FOR YOURSELVES?!” Byrel thundered.
“YES!” they roared with one voice.
“FOR BLACKSTONE!” Byrel shouted.
“FOR BLACKSTONE!” his men answered with one mighty voice, and surged forward against the enemy with courage in their hearts.
The tide began to turn.
49
Eric
Eric stared in horror. Not only had Daniel and Mira beaten his demons, they had inspired Blackstone’s soldiers. For the first time in the battle, the enemy was gaining ground instead of losing it.
“Not so easy, is it?” Cythera asked mockingly.
“Shut up,” Eric muttered.
He looked to his right to see the Unnamed One staring at him accusingly.
“Fine,” Eric spat. “Let’s see how they handle a sky full of them.”
He let out his rage and howled. Within seconds he could feel a squirming sensation across his skin, like tiny worms crawling over him.
Tattooed words were moving along the backs of his hands. He knew they covered every inch of his body, and that his eyes had turned jet black.
Primal Summoning Mode engaged
All acts of summoning and possession take 25% less mana
“Heptus gorgulis!” he screamed, then began to chant the word like an insane canticle. “Heptus gorgulis, heptus gorgulis, heptus gorgulis, heptus gorgulis …”
Smoke poured from his face, body, and arms in a torrent. A dozen winged worms burst out of the darkness into the sky, followed by dozens more.
50
Mira
Mira’s stomach turned as she saw the black cloud atop the castle wall and the flock of flying serpents shooting out of it.
Half peeled off after Daniel, and the other half were coming after her.
She could handle them – after all, they weren’t fast enough to catch her griffin outright, and they burst into smoke after just three or four well-placed arrows. But Daniel was going to be a different story. The only way he could get rid of them was to engage them directly – and with the numbers chasing him, that was going to be suicide. She could just imagine his griffin plummeting from the sky, a dozen of the nasty things clamped onto its body and wings like leeches.
If only he had some sort of long range weapon…
That’s when she got the idea.
“Dr. Wolff, tell Daniel to fly over towards me!” she shouted.
From the way Daniel’s griffin wheeled through the air and headed her way, she assumed he’d gotten the message.
Mira directed her griffin in a straight shot over the forest treetops. The flying worms followed right behind her.
They weren’t too smart, which was good. They basically just followed her like heat-seeking missiles, though they were only marginally faster than her griffin. They were still several hundred feet behind her, and were closing the gap at maybe ten feet per second.
Plenty of time.
She slung her bow across her back so she had both hands free. Then she unbuckled her legs from their bindings and carefully turned around in the saddle. The air whipping around her was frightening, but the griffin flew straight and true without the slightest jolt.
Once she was in a reversed direction, she strapped her legs back in. Now she was facing the tail of the griffin – and her pursuers.
The battleground and castle were far in the distance, but the worms were only a hundred feet away.
She pulled the bow from off of her back. She’d found it the Mines of Alark, in the chamber full of gold where the dragon had attacked them. The bow was enchanted: every time she pulled back the bowstring, an arrow magically appeared, ready to fire.
And she could pull back the bowstring fast.
She shot three arrows in rapid succession – fwip fwip fwip!
Her first two hit inside the three-jawed mouth of the lead worm. The third arrow missed, but hit the hide of a worm behind it.
The worms were so tightly grouped together that she couldn’t miss. And they either weren’t smart enough or fast enough to take any sort of evasive action against her arrows.
This is going to be the most fun target practice EVER.
She began to fire into the flock as fast as she could.
Fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip!
The worms began bursting into smoke. PAFF! PAFF! PAFF!
As the flock thinned out and it was no longer like shooting fish in a barrel, she took more care in aiming. The nice thing was, the closer they got, the easier it was to aim.
Five seconds later, all of her pursuers were gone, with only puffs of black smoke dissipating into the air.
She looked over across the treetops.
Daniel was about three hundred feet off to her left, with a swarm of worms just forty feet behind him.
Dr. Wolff’s voice spoke in her ear over the howling wind. “Daniel’s getting a little worried.”
“Tell him I’m coming!” Mira shouted as her griffin veered through the air.
51
Eric
Eric watched as his flying serpents disappeared in puffs of smoke far out on the horizon.
He’d summoned fifty of them in less than a minute, which had tapped out almost all of his mana. It was slowly regenerating, but it would be awhile before he was back up to full power.
He could summon more, but nowhere near fifty. And the griffins were just fast enough that Mira had plenty of time to pick the worms off one by one.
“INEFFECTIVE,” the Dark Figure pronounced, almost as though reading his thoughts.
Eric glared at him, then turned to Cythera. “When they circle back around, have the mages hit them with everything they’ve got.”
“What if they fly low and we hit our own men?”
“As long as we hit more of their guys than ours, I’m fine with… that…” Eric trailed off, then grinned. “Actually, have half of the mages target the griffins. The other half I want to kill as many of Blackstone’s soldiers as possible. NOW.”
52
Daniel
With the worms dispatched by Mira’s arrows, the griffins headed back to the battlefield.
Daniel figured that the flying demons were the worst Eric could throw at them.
He was wrong.
Whoever was up on that wall, they’d obviously been holding back before, because what happened next was like somebody turned on the whoop-ass spigot full blast.
Fireball after fireball, ice blast after ice blast, lightning bolt after lightning bolt shot out from atop the wall. It was like footage of a WWII battle, with anti-aircraft guns firing non-stop into the sky.
The fireballs and ice he could see coming from a half mile away, and they were relatively slow, so Daniel had plenty of time to evade. The lightning was much faster, obviously, but it was a shorter-range weapon, and unpredictable at long distances. The electricity tended to arc down to the earth after the first couple of hundred feet.
Unfortunately, that meant that the soldiers on the ground were getting slaughtered.
In fact, half of the fire and ice was targeting the Blackstone forces, too.
He had to do something about the mages on top of that wall.
“Dr. Wolff, tell Mira to concentrate on the enemy on the ground. I’m going to try something,” Daniel shouted.
Some of the firebolts had hit trees in the forest, blasting them apart and scorching them. A couple of dead ones were actually on fire, their bare branches crackling with flame.
Daniel selected a moderately sized dead oak and had the griffin come at it from an angle, slamming into its trunk from the side.
The tree groaned
and broke, and thundered to the forest floor in a crackling blaze.
Only the limbs were on fire – for now. The heat still reached Daniel from fifteen feet away, though, and felt like it was roasting him through its armor.
The griffin latched onto the thirty-foot trunk with its talons, then heaved and strained its wings until it lifted the tree into the air. Then the griffin soared up, up, up, carrying its flaming load with it.
Once they were a thousand feet above the castle – so high that they were basically out of range of any fireballs or ice attacks – Daniel positioned the griffin over the castle wall.
And had it drop.
Not let go of the oak; the griffin itself dropped as it held onto the tree.
He needed the griffin to be able to steer, just in case Daniel’s aim was off.
The bird adjusted its wings, aiming the flaming tree for the wall.
Fireballs slammed into the tree trunk, but exploded harmlessly in embers all around Daniel and the griffin.
He imagined the individual faces of people below him, staring up black-eyed and blank-faced at the flaming bomb –
And then the griffin let go and launched off across the city.
The tree CRASHED into the top of the wall. It crushed dozens of archers and mages, and flung another equal number off the wall where they fell to their deaths in the streets below.
Daniel imagined Eric’s enraged face.
Suck on THAT, asshole.
53
Eric
Eric grabbed Cythera’s arm and dove out of the way as the tree’s flaming branches SLAMMED down just feet away from where they had stood.
The two of them actually rolled through the Dark Figure, passing through its body. It might have looked from the outside as though Eric was passing through smoke, but it felt like ice cold water rushing through his body, all the way to his very soul.
Eric sat up from where he’d fallen atop the wall and stared at the burning oak just a couple yards away.
“Son of a bitch…” he whispered in awe, then looked at the griffin soaring away across the city.
Instead of hatred, he felt respect.
“Well-played,” he muttered grimly.
“You… you saved me,” Cythera murmured breathlessly underneath him.
“Don’t get excited,” Eric growled as he stood up and pulled her to her feet.
The Dark Figure was silhouetted against the flames, gazing out at the battlefield. It didn’t even seem to care about the fire.
“Have somebody put that out!” Eric ordered Cythera.
One of the few remaining mages on the wall covered the tree in ice, extinguishing the flames in a blast of snowy white.
“YOU ARE LOSING CONTROL,” the Dark Figure said.
“That was just luck.”
“WHEN THEY CONTINUE TO MOUNT SUCCESSFUL ATTACKS, IT IS NO LONGER LUCK.”
“They’ve had a few good breaks – that’s it,” Eric insisted.
“MORE ARE COMING.”
Eric was about to ask, What do you mean, ‘more are coming’? but the answer became apparent.
Across the battlefield came a familiar screeching sound, something he had heard only a half hour before – a hair-raising, spine-shivering sound –
But now it was multiplied tenfold.
54
Mira
Mira watched Daniel’s griffin uproot the flaming tree and thought, Nice trick. She expected him to dump it on the army of skullheads, but then the bird-creature lifted it right up into the sky. Way up into the sky.
Maybe he’s hoping it’ll have more impact if he drops it from higher up, she thought.
Either way, she decided to follow suit.
She couldn’t find a dead tree on fire, but there were plenty of plain dead ones. She found a recently fallen elm in a forest clearing, and her griffin snagged its trunk. The creature heaved, then pulled the tree along with it into the air.
That was about when Daniel’s griffin bombed the wall.
She watched in wide-eyed wonder as the tree wiped out a thirty-foot span of archers and mages in a crash of flames and embers. Suddenly the firebolts and ice attacks from the castle wall decreased by sixty percent.
She looked around the battlefield. She’d gotten Daniel’s message via Rebecca: concentrate on the enemy on the ground.
But how best to do that?
She was fairly sure she could take out one of the giant demon bugs still crushing everything in its path.
Or maybe she could try to find a general or a colonel or something and flatten him. Maybe that would cause the Hell soldiers to scatter in disarray.
Then she noticed the catapults.
None of them had been fired since the drawbridge had gone up. Apparently their sole purpose was to goad Blackstone into sending their soldiers out into a trap. Once that was done, there wasn’t any further use for them.
Or their ammunition, apparently. Behind each catapult was a wagon of about twenty barrels, all neatly stacked.
Mira wondered if maybe they were some kind of explosive.
And if she could set them off by dropping her tree on them.
If she was wrong, then she would waste one shot. No big deal – she basically had a forest full of unlimited ammunition.
But if she was right…
A large number of the skeleton army was near the catapults. If all twenty barrels went off on impact, maybe she could take out a couple of hundred enemy soldiers at once.
Worth a shot.
She directed the griffin to soar high above the battlefield. Then she had it hover as she lined up the tree and released it.
Down, down, down…
It wasn’t a complete hit – only the bottom half of the tree hit the wagon – but it was enough. Almost all of the barrels shattered at once, and the wagon collapsed like it was made out of twigs.
She’d been wrong about the explosion, though. There wasn’t any – just a wave of black liquid as all twenty barrels splashed their contents into the air.
Probably tar, nothing more.
But there was a bloodcurdling scream. In fact, there were hundreds of howling shrieks. Which was strange – she hadn’t hit more than a few soldiers.
Then she realized that the screams weren’t coming from the soldiers, but from the liquid itself.
The black tar began to writhe like a giant amoeba. Monstrous heads emerged for an instant – dragons’ heads, lions’ heads, demons’ heads – and then disappeared back into the muck. Tentacles erupted and dragged Hell soldiers into the tar, kicking and screaming.
“Holy crap,” Mira whispered as she watched the gigantic black pseudopod slowly decimate the rear ranks of the Hell army.
She worried for a second what it would do once it got to the Blackstone soldiers – but the black monstrosity had several thousand more skeleton soldiers to eat before it got anywhere close to the front line.
She looked down.
Two more catapults. Two more wagons full of barrels –
Which the armored skeletons were trying to move as quickly as possible into the treeline, four men to a barrel at a time. But it was slow going, and the barrels would still be clustered close together for the next minute or two.
Mira wheeled the griffin around and went looking for another tree.
55
Eric
Eric watched as the hell spore slowly devoured the rear of Korvos’ army.
This was not going as planned.
“YOU HAVE HAD YOUR FUN LONG ENOUGH,” the Dark One berated him. “IT IS TIME TO END THIS.”
“You’re right,” Eric said, and lifted his hands. “Omnix kaleptek, omnix kaleptek!”
Black smoke shot out of his fingers and spiraled up into the sky.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” the Dark Figure asked without emotion.
“I’m going to possess the griffins and fly them into the ground.”
“THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. GRIFFINS ARE IMMUNE TO DEMONIC POSSESSION.”
Eric
stared in shock at the shadowy face, then snarled, “Well that’s convenient!”
“NO, IT IS THE ESTABLISHED RULES OF GAMEPLAY, WHICH IS DOUBTLESS WHY THE CREATOR CHOSE THEM FOR YOUR FRIENDS.”
“Fine – I’ll just possess Daniel and Mira and have them fly the griffins into the ground, then.”
“THE GRIFFINS ARE CONTROLLED BY NEURAL LINK. IF YOU POSSESS A RIDER, THE NEURAL LINK WILL BE BROKEN, AND THE GRIFFIN WILL RECOVER AUTONOMY. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO INDUCE EITHER OF THEM INTO SUICIDE.”
“Fine – I’ll have Daniel and Mira attack each other!”
“YOU ALREADY POSSESSED THE MALE ONCE, AND HE FOUGHT OFF YOUR ATTACK SUCCESSFULLY. IT WILL BE EASIER FOR HIM THE SECOND TIME. EVEN IF YOU SUCCEED IN POSSESSING THE FEMALE, I REITERATE THAT THE NEURAL LINK WILL BE BROKEN, AND HER GRIFFIN WILL REGAIN AUTONOMY. DOUBTLESS IT WILL MOVE HER OUT OF RANGE RATHER THAN ALLOW HER TO ATTACK THE MALE.”
“God DAMN it!” Eric raged. “It’s like the game’s stacking the rules against me!”
“THE RULES WERE PRE-WRITTEN. IF YOU LEARNED THE LIMITS OF YOUR POWER, YOU MIGHT WIELD IT MORE EFFECTIVELY.”
“Can’t you change the rules about the griffins?”
“NO. I DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY NOR THE POWER. YET.”
Eric cursed and stared at the griffins, which were both skimming over the forest again, looking for more trees to drop. “If I could just get out there and…”
Eric stopped abruptly as though remembering something, then smiled.
He looked over at another part of the forest and narrowed his eyes in concentration.
There was a massive roar, both high-pitched and bass rumble all at once.
About a mile from the castle walls, gigantic wings beat heavily against the treetops and lifted a black shape into the air.
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 11