The Werebeasts were making an obvious push against the civilians, gathering in a large group for their attack. Their heightened intelligence had shown them that attacking the Shieldmen was next to useless, so they re-strategized and targeted the weak point in the line. Gerold got there just in time to encounter a large wave of the Werebeasts, who were pushing their bug allies out of the way in order to strike hard and fast at the less-powerful civilians.
“Why don’t you take on someone your own size, huh?” Gerold shouted, whipping his ice-made battleaxe cross-wise at the Werebear in front of him, which tried to rear back in surprise at his sudden appearance. The push of its brethren, however, made dodging impossible; given that he was approximately the same height as most of the Werebeasts, his powerful slice essentially cut the upright-walking bear in half, the frigid ice of the battleaxe leaving frosted fur along the wound in its wake. It also seemed to freeze the edges of the horrendous wound, keeping all of the blood inside the Werebear; Gerold couldn’t help but think how effective that kind of thing would be against the Golems back near Nurboldar, but it didn’t really make a difference here and now.
Some sort of danger sense went off in his peripheral vision and he jerked back in the middle of his follow-through, narrowly missing having a fistful of claws tear into his protective face grate. A quick upward slice of his icy weapon was enough to amputate the offending claw at the elbow of the Werewolf that tried to hurt him, and he instinctively kicked out with his right foot. A crunch of bones was his reward as he heard the Werewolf’s leg being destroyed by his lower attack, and he turned slightly to his left to take a charge of a Wereboar, slamming down with a powerful overhead slice onto the head of the tusked, two-legged monster.
His attack was so effective that it surprised him how easily it passed through the flesh and bones of the charging attacker; as a result, the ice-formed battleaxe kept going until it hit the stone floor of the Tavern, shattering into a half-dozen pieces. He knew it would reform in a few seconds, but as he turned from the split-open Wereboar, he greeted another 25 Werebeasts with nothing but the broken handle of a battleaxe.
“Uh, oh.”
They attacked almost as a unit, coordinated in a way that was totally unlike any other monsters he had encountered. Even the Goblins weren’t adept at tactics, though they certainly did use their numbers to their advantage and knew when to swarm and when not to.
Spreading out so that the maximum number of them could attack him at once, they leapt, charged, or roared out in a coordinated assault that would leave him battered and torn apart if he were in his normal Shieldmen armor. Fortunately for him, he was in his Deep Diver suit.
Just before they struck, he activated the Nether portion of his defenses. A cushion of darkness surrounded his entire form, blocking out the light from the torches in the room as well. The blackness was so complete that he couldn’t see anything, and even sounds were muted nearly to inaudibility. Gerold couldn’t see or hear – but he could certainly feel.
The attacks all came within a second of each other, battering his suit in a seemingly relentless barrage of…well, it was hard to tell, actually. Instead of the powerful hits he was expecting, it felt like he was getting hit by a bunch of children wielding thin, wooden sticks. Some of them felt like thicker sticks, which he assumed might be the Wereboars charging into him, but other than making him shift a little to the side, there really wasn’t any damage.
After a few seconds of that, the battering of his suit stopped. Gerold assumed they had backed off, confused by the aura of darkness surrounding him, as well as being unable to physically harm him. While he couldn’t see if his battleaxe had reformed from ice, he figured it had been long enough; he dropped his Nether-based cloak of protection and was immediately greeted by 2 dozen Werebeasts in a wide circle around his position. He wasn’t sure how he could tell, but he was convinced that they had extremely confused expressions on their beastly faces.
Gerold didn’t hesitate. He swung his battleaxe at the nearest of them, going for another chop that would hopefully separate both halves of the Werebear’s body he targeted. At the moment before he connected with the confused and surprised monster’s fur, he was suddenly worried that his weapon hadn’t been repaired, as he hadn’t even checked before he struck; he would feel extremely foolish hitting the Werebeast with just an axe handle.
Fortunately, his trust in the way Sandra had created his weapons was proven to be correct, and he barely felt any resistance at all as his icy battleaxe clove through the Werebear. He continued his attack as he spun around with his attack, throwing himself towards the next in line as he rotated, slicing off the leg of a Were-tiger; with another rotation, he aimed upwards, passing his axe through a Werewolf’s chest cavity and bisected its neck in the process.
Those were the only free shots he was going to get, however, as the Werebeasts had recovered from their shock and were back on the attack. Luckily for Gerold, he wasn’t the only one that had taken advantage of their confusion.
A wave of axes descended on the Werebeasts, chopping off limbs here and there, crippling them until they could be finished off. A half-dozen of them managed to use their speed to avoid the counter-attacks by the civilians and pounced on Gerold, but the Deep Diver suit lived up to his hope for it and withstood the majority of attacks on its shape. Bites and scratches left tiny dents here and there, as well as cosmetic damage, but he was able to use the “strength” afforded by the suit to beat them away, if he didn’t connect with his ice-formed weapon right away.
Within 20 seconds, all of the Werebeasts were dead – but that was only the beginning. Gerold stomped back into the line with the civilians, who were looking thoroughly relieved at his timely intervention; he looked at the break in the Tavern wall about 40 feet ahead, and there still seemed as though there would be no end in sight to the monsters streaming through.
As he was bracing himself for another wave of attackers, there was a strange tickle on his back.
“Gerry!”
The familiar voice seemed to come from right behind him, but before he could turn he felt something slam into his unprotected back, causing him to overreact and fall forward, shattering his ice axe as he tried to catch himself.
Chapter 27
“Get up, Gerry! It was just a blasted spider, but I got it for you!”
Gerold got his suit to its knees just as a wave of Giga-ants arrived. His weapon hadn’t reformed quite yet, so he slammed his arms down on the multitude of bug monsters, squishing them with the metal of the suit itself. After splattering into goopy messes, the Giga-ants seemed to think better of attacking him directly, and they parted around either side of him in order to get to the civilians on either side of him. Worried that they would somehow manage to sneak around and get into his suit from behind, he quickly got to his feet and risked a quick glance behind him as he stomped down on two of the Giga-ants that had gotten too close.
It was Master Blacksmith Jespin, wielding a master-crafted battleaxe and shield that he had likely made himself at some point in his career.
As he turned back to the line, seeing that another batch of Werebeasts was coming in behind the smaller Bugs, he shouted loud enough for the Blacksmith to hear him. “Thanks for the save—but we have to get out of here!”
“We can’t leave now! Well, I could, but they can’t survive without your help, Gerry.”
Gerold swiped at a Werewolf that approached him first, but it dodged his attack with superior speed, followed up by a Werepanther that jumped back just in time to avoid any damage, putting his suit slightly off-balance. Either they were somehow faster now than they were previously, or he had been such an unknown before that they hadn’t known how to react until now. Regardless of the reason, they were wary of his attacks, instead opting to avoid him as they attacked Gerold’s civilian allies.
He wasn’t having any of that, however, as he attacked them from the side as they were engaged with his people. One after another he practically d
iced apart with his frigid battleaxe, relieving some of the pressure on the civilians, but there always seemed to be more right behind them.
“Master – they’re not stopping! We need to flee while there’s still enough of us to cover the retreat.” Gerold was thinking about going through the main entrance of the Hall, but he realized that he might need to go with the rest further into the mountain in order to protect them. Now that he was involved in the fight, the thought of abandoning the civilians to their fate left a bad taste in his mouth. Or that could be the beetle guts that just splashed everywhere; it’s hard to tell.
Apparently his shout was loud enough that the King heard him. “NO! I will not be the first King in history to lose one of our Halls to these blasted monsters! Stay where you are; we just need to hold on for a short time longer!”
Gerold thought that was a stupid reason not to retreat when they had the chance, because the Hall could always be retaken in the future, when they were better prepared. Speaking of that….
“Master – are there any reinforcements coming,” he asked, loud enough for Jespin to hear him, but hopefully not for the King or First-shield Parten to listen in.
“No; the King came through the main connecting tunnel with Coppertine Hall just before this attack, and there are strict regulations in place whenever there is an attack.” The Master Blacksmith was staying behind Gerold, which the former Shieldman was thankful for, because it kept him safer; meanwhile he listened to the explanation while he continued to be the main defense on the civilian line, swiping his battleaxe wherever he was needed, keeping the casualties down to nothing. He knew that wasn’t going to last long, though, as everyone defending was starting to show signs of deep exhaustion. How long have they been fighting? he wondered, though that wasn’t the question he asked.
“What regulations?” Either he hadn’t heard about it before, or his mind was too focused on the fight to comprehend what Jespin was talking about.
“As soon as an attack occurs on a stronghold, if the non-combative residents are forced to evacuate, no other reinforcements are to be sent through without knowledge of the situation. This prevents them walking into a trap or ambush, and would be a waste of those reinforcements. The only way to get word to Coppertine Hall for help is if a Shieldman is sent through as a messenger, but there’s no way that any of them can be spared at the moment.”
That seemed like a bunch of poor regulations to Gerold, but he supposed it made historical sense. A millennium ago, most of the Dwarven clans had been independent, sticking to their own Halls and stronghold, only interacting in times of general defense – when they weren’t warring with themselves. He already knew about the way the tunnels could be easily collapsed if monsters attempted to pass through them, which was a holdover of those times in case there were an attack by another clan.
Oh, to be alive during the time when raiding clans were more of a worry than dungeon monsters. Unfortunately, after the devastation to the Dwarven people after the events that caused the wasteland where Sandra had her dungeon, the King put a stop to those types of practices. There were too few of them at that point, and the clans had to work together to survive. In fact, the clans were all but diluted into obscurity because of the mutual partnership and intermarrying, which was beneficial to the entire Dwarven race. “So why keep these outdated regulations?”
He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud until the Master Blacksmith answered. “Because there had been no reason to change them. There hasn’t been a serious external attack on the Halls since I’ve been alive, so there was no cause to re-evaluate them.” Still seemed stupid to Gerold. “In fact, the only one that still makes sense is to keep the Drums of War pounding, letting the nearby Hall know that there is still danger present. If the Drums stop and no one has come through to let those on the opposite side of the connecting tunnel know it’s safe, then the tunnel will be collapsed.”
Great. “So, what’s the plan?”
Master Blacksmith Jespin spoke softer, just barely loud enough for Gerold to hear. “We can’t leave right now, because it would doom everyone here. We were nearly at our breaking point when you arrived, and without your help, we would’ve been slaughtered a half hour ago.”
Gerold hadn’t realized he had already been fighting for over 30 minutes non-stop by that point, and the floor was littered with little orbs of dungeon loot where he had killed countless Gigantic Bugs and Werebeasts. Looking around as if waking from a nightmarish dream, he saw that the stream of monsters kept coming, though perhaps it looked a bit less than before? Unfortunately, his own side was looking worse; at least a dozen more civilians had fallen while he had tried to protect them, and the rest looked ready to collapse from exhaustion at any moment.
The Shieldmen didn’t look much better, as there were at least another half-dozen missing from their number. As time went on and the monsters didn’t significantly reduce in number, even more would perish as energy ran out and their armor and weapons disintegrated from the lack of elemental power sustaining them, and the Shieldmen themselves would pass out from being completely drained.
The King, his bodyguards, and First-shield Parten still seemed to be holding up, though even they would be running out of energy soon; as they didn’t have a way to regenerate it through the use of Energy Orbs like Gerold did, they couldn’t get any of it back unless they got some sleep. Fat chance of that happening in the middle of a battle.
“Master, we can’t last much longer. Unless we can stem the flow of monsters and seal this entrance—” Gerold was in the middle of slicing a Giga-bee out of the air as it dove toward his face, thankful that they didn’t seem coordinated enough to swarm and attack them from above or behind, when something interrupted his warning to Jespin. A rumbling came from the monsters’ tunnel, and at first Gerold thought it was collapsing. As if his words had made it happen, the stream of monsters stopped spilling out of the 15-foot-high opening, as though their numbers had finally run out and the dungeons were eliminating the way back to their dungeons. He had heard that they had done that in the past when they had attacked, because there was too much danger in leaving a straight passageway to their Cores – so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
The rumbling continued, until it turned to shaking, and Gerold couldn’t help but smile in relief as it appeared as though he was correct: The tunnel must be collapsing if it was causing that type of ruckus. The last of the final wave of monsters assaulted the entire line in a rush, as if they were making a final attempt to break through. The knowledge that their efforts had been successful – and that they could finally rest as soon as the rest of the monsters were killed – gave the defenders a boost of determination, and they fought ferociously to eliminate everything that was in the room.
Gerold relaxed in relief as the last Giga-ant was killed by one of the civilians, and he looked around at the others, seeing the exhausted but relieved faces. They weren’t exactly happy, because many of their friends and likely family had perished during the defense – but they had done it, they had survived when the odds seemed against them. Now I just have to grab Master Jespin and get out of here. He turned to the Master Blacksmith, but his head was tilted to the side as if he was worried about something, staring down the tunnel.
“We did it, Master—”
Jespin cut him off. “I’ve never known any of the attacking dungeons to collapse their tunnel before all of their monsters were killed. I don’t think—"
Recognizing what he was saying immediately, Gerold turned back to the tunnel just as the rumbling reached a crescendo, only to see a massive ball of dark-grey chitin rolling through the entrance, traveling so fast that he didn’t even have time to react with more than just raising his arms – as if that would protect him – completely forgetting about his Nether-based absorption shield. The 15-foot diameter ball rolled right into him, and he felt as if someone had just punched him in the chest as he was flung backwards, slamming against the far wall with enough force to
crack even the strong metal of the Deep Diver.
He collapsed on the floor, unable to move his suit after he recovered his wits from the impact. Groaning in pain, knowing that he had likely cracked a rib or two, he pulled himself out of the destroyed Deep Diver, seeing the outside of it for the first time. In addition to the scratches and dents he had endured during the frantic fight, there were giant cracks running all over it, likely breaking the enchantments that allowed Gerold to move the material.
Screams suddenly penetrated his ears as his concentration came back, and he looked up to see a scene out of a nightmare.
The Giga-pillbug that had rolled through the tunnel entrance had been deflected slightly when it crashed into Gerold, meaning that it had missed running over Jespin likely by a hair’s breadth. Unfortunately, it didn’t miss over half of the civilians that were still assembled in their defensive line, and over 50 of them had been obliterated by the rolling Bug. When it finally came to a stop, it had unrolled itself, and was now currently approaching the rest of the impromptu militia, using its deadly pincers on its front to literally cut people in half – through their armor.
The Shieldmen rushed to help, but the rumbling hadn’t stopped. A second Giga-pillbug rushed through, this time aiming for the moving group of Shieldmen. While they weren’t expecting it, the 29 remaining Shieldmen (including the King) braced for the attack behind their shields, but that didn’t seem to matter much; half of them were knocked aside or sent flying, though none had been hit as hard as Gerold had been.
And, luckily, the impacts ended up damaging the hard chitinous shell of the Bug. Disgusting ichor leaked out of the outer shell of the second Giga-pillbug in various places, but that didn’t slow it down. Ruthlessly attacking the Shieldmen that were still standing, it struck and maneuvered around them quite swiftly, its hulking form belying a swift ability to move around its multitude of legs under the chitin-armor shell on its back.
The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) Page 27