by Rosie Scott
“Keep those controls clear,” I told Azazel, who nodded with agreement. His victims already cluttered the stone surrounding the spool, and he added more to the list as enemy reinforcements arrived.
I turned toward the other side of the chasm and brought my war horn to my lips.
HUUURRRNNNNN!
Dax immediately reacted, commanding his forces to cross the suspended bridge. A hoarse female voice far to my left yelled a command I couldn't discern almost as a response, and a new group of foes flooded up the opposite wall. Azazel took a few of them out quickly, but one dwarf loaded a slingshot with clay ammo and launched it over the gap.
“Back!” I screamed, tugging Cerin and Nyx with me since Azazel reacted quickly by himself. The clay ball was intended for my head, but my prompt retreat ensured it broke open on the stone instead. A bubbling caustic acid escaped its clay prison, catching Nyx on the hand with its belated splash. It filled the area with the stench of burning, decaying flesh as the acid quickly ate through skin and then focused on the muscle beneath. Nyx rambled off a string of pained curses as she scrambled back.
“Wait. Wait,” I pleaded, hurrying after her. Nyx listened and stood still, shaking with trauma as the acid tore through to her metacarpus bone. I quickly rinsed the deepening wound with water before treating it directly with antitoxin life magic.
“Kai. I'll heal her,” Cerin offered, motioning toward where his undead corpses defended us at the top of the stairway. “You have more ranged options than I do.”
“Thank you.” I turned back to the battle. Azazel had defended the bridge controls alone though the cranks were slightly turned as if two dwarves had reached them if only for a moment. Recent corpses were piled around the area, but a few paralyzed soldiers were lying around the spool protected by life shields. He'd disabled even the foes who couldn't be reached by arrows.
I eyed the dwindling force of corpses still fighting nearby, but I didn't re-raise the dead quite yet. Dwarven alchemy was our largest concern in this fight; I wanted to deter our foes from using it again.
Winds howled between my palms, building in strength as more corpses fell defeated, leaving the front line of foes vulnerable. I thrust the air magic at the closest edge of the acid puddle. The gust of wind blew through standing acid, convincing it to spray over the approaching onslaught in a liquid mist of pain.
Dwarves and mages alike stumbled back from the winds before they screeched in shock and panic. Exposed faces and necks smoked and bubbled as they melted. It hit one man on the skin covering his larynx, and he screamed as acid split the organ in half before eating through surrounding arteries and veins. His noises ceased when he could no longer produce them, but his panicking heart continued to frantically pump blood through exposed severed arteries. The liquid audibly drained from his gaping throat as he finally collapsed.
My acid counter-attack caught the foes off-guard, and their fear was palpable in the air. Life mages pulled some wounded down the stairs to take them out of the fight, but the rest advanced. I noticed some dwarves put bags of alchemical ammo back on their belt and draw weapons instead, unwilling to become victims of their own concoctions. I sent black tendrils through the area next, and a small army of sizzling corpses rose and turned to face former kin.
With a glance toward the bridge, I noted that Dax's army was almost across. The Alderi necromancers from my own army who followed him led hordes of the dead. Narangar would soon be ours.
BOOM!
An agonized screech followed the explosion. Far to my left and just before Narangar's castle, it rained blood and body parts. An eagle-kin had been fighting in the courtyard with the other flying beastmen Calder sent us, but a lethal dwarven weapon had taken it out. One separated wing fell to the stone with a splat, followed by the beastman's torso and head. Parts of the eagle were singed with fire, and a fine powder clouded the air where it had been hit.
“Cannon...?” My question trailed off as I found no evidence of one. Having cannons in such a location was stupid; if it damaged the castle infrastructure enough, the entire thing and all its people could fall to an untimely demise.
“No.” Azazel pointed quickly to the castle's entrance at the far end of the courtyard. “It appears we've found Golda. She wields a launcher weapon. It's not like the hand cannon Tyrus used. It doesn't shoot cannonballs; it launches explosives.”
I was utterly perplexed; I'd never heard of such a weapon. I searched frantically for Golda hoping to study it.
Narangar's regent stood on a landing just outside of the castle's double doors, at the far end of the inclining courtyard. Golda Orland was unsurprisingly a dwarf. Her hair was as golden as her name implied though it shied away from her face by the restriction of a thick helmet. She appeared middle-aged, her tanned skin creased and rough with age, harsh weather, and hard physical labor. The landing beneath her was flat and stretched across the front of the building before meeting the courtyard with two curved sets of steps. Golda was guarded by a half-wall at the edge of the landing and a small unit of human and Celdic mages that ensured the regent had magical protections. Golda's weapon was a long, tubular contraption made of solid steel that appeared as heavy as it was deadly. She propped the launcher up on the half-wall before her and turned to a crate of supplies nearby. She retrieved what appeared to be a small ball. Golda held the ball out to a human mage who used fire to light an attached fuse. The regent hefted up her weapon, shoved the ammo in through a hole at the top of its barrel, and pumped the front of the tube back until the launcher was shorter. Golda lifted it up, her eyes on multiple flying beastmen who took turns swooping through the courtyard and abducting soldiers.
At first, nothing happened. Seconds went by as Golda held her weapon steady, one eye closed as she aimed and focused. Her left hand held the heavy weapon beneath its barrel while her right was patient on a trigger closer to her shoulder. As if reacting to something we couldn't see or hear, she abruptly pulled the trigger.
The still-burning ammo launched out of the barrel like a cannonball, but its aim was much more direct. It hurtled in a straight line toward a group of flying beastmen. Closest to the ammo was a ba'al-kin, I noted with gratefulness. Ba'al-kin were notoriously hard to dissect and kill.
BOOM!
The ball erupted in a flash of powder, chemical reactions, and flame. Pieces of sharp black exoskeleton plunged through the crowds like shrapnel, impaling multiple flying allies with knives made of bone. The ba'al-kin fell to the courtyard in clumps, utterly eviscerated. Multiple bird-kin followed, at the mercy of severe collateral injuries. So much blood escaped from the mutilated bodies of beastmen that it ran audibly down the decline of the courtyard, past the boots of hundreds of soldiers, and finally over the edge of stone to the city far below like sticky rainfall.
I was quiet, contemplative. Dax's rough voice yelled orders just below us where the bridge met the courtyard; our armies were here, but they were now vulnerable. Enemies swarmed the area, so Golda wasn't likely to target our men while they intertwined with her own soldiers. The regent's focus was only on the upper courtyard. I thought about raining meteors over Golda's explosive ammo crate, but the cavern ceiling reminded me that I could not summon any magic from the sky where there was none.
“Kai...” Azazel's voice was low, concerned. He'd only said my name, but it was a clear warning. He knew all too well where my mind was going.
“The weapon is slow to reload. If I can keep a high and my senses sharp, I will have the advantage.”
Dry laughter sounded out from thin air to my right where Nyx was invisible. It was the first time I realized she and Cerin were back in the fight, so I felt grateful he healed her. “What is it about Narangar that causes you to make stupid decisions?”
“A decision isn't stupid if it works,” I retorted.
“You won't know it works until you either win or fail,” Nyx shot back.
“I'll report in to you when I succeed,” I told her, before turning to Azazel. “Keep gu
arding the bridge controls. If Dax's men make headway below us, request they defend the area and hold it. Only if that happens do I want you to follow me and take any shots. Until Golda is unguarded, you can do nothing, and I'd rather you be safe.”
“As I'd rather you be safe, but saying that never gets me anywhere,” Azazel replied. He sighed anxiously before adding, “I'll abide by your orders, Kai. We'll hold the bridge.”
“Thank you.” I marched forward, moving around our small defense of undead to the stairs leading to the courtyard. I fought my way off the wall using only death magic. By the time I reached the courtyard, my skull ached with a powerful high, and a brand new unit of corpses picked themselves up to defend me from those who sought my death.
I moved through the crowds with the undead as my shield. The beastmen still swarmed the courtyard, but they avoided the airspace near Golda, understanding the danger. A fire mage by the regent's side alerted her to my presence just as I broke through the rear Chairel ranks with my horde of undead. Golda met my gaze, promptly snorted, and then spit on the landing in distaste. The mage lit the fuse on an explosive and handed it to the regent. Golda loaded the ball in the launcher and pointed it directly at me.
I stopped in my tracks. Watching, waiting. Down the barrel of Golda's weapon, a slight orange glow flickered. The regent kept her eyes on me for a few moments, but then one closed. Her trigger finger flinched.
I scrambled back and sent my dead forward as another explosion rattled through the air, shaking the rock beneath my boots until I toppled over to the ground. Shrapnel overwhelmed my life shield until it dissipated. Copper permeated my tongue as the blood of my corpses washed over me. A fresh cut on my upper cheekbone bled freely, but I couldn't remember it being injured.
“Another!” Golda's command echoed in my mind, forcing me to gather myself once more. I hurried to stand, and the bloodied stone where I'd been was quickly occupied as a dwarf collapsed into it, jerking as he died from one carbon arrow to the spinal cord. I mentally thanked Azazel. While I'd focused on the explosives, some foes had followed me without my knowledge. I sent enervat through these pesky soldiers and energy refreshed me. I doubled my efforts into a new life shield and called the dead to my aid.
Golda already pointed her reloaded launcher at me. In preparation for another explosion, I summoned earth.
The weapon expelled another explosive, and I threw the magic to my feet. A stone wall built before me, stretching out of its darker kin. I hoped for the explosive to ricochet back to Golda and her posse similar to the strategy I'd used against Tyrus. Instead, the wall cracked and crumbled as the ammo went off anyway, the after-effects of its explosion sending me flying back through the courtyard. My strong shield went out as I was thrown against the fortress's western wall.
I cursed under my breath. A high-pitched ringing assaulted my ears, the epidermis of my lower face was peeling with burns from being near the explosion, and now the vertebrae just above my pelvis were pleading for mercy from slamming against stone. And here I was, picking myself off the ground again, even farther from Golda than I'd been before.
We needed a plan B. I couldn't even get close enough to Golda to swarm her with the dead, and most of the corpses following me were little more than chunks of shredded meat after getting caught in multiple explosions. I turned to the stairway, prepared to consult with Azazel.
The cry of an angered oozlum halted me in my tracks, and I abruptly canceled my new plan. Holter hovered in the air on the eastern side of the landing, watching Golda and her entourage with calculating eyes as the regent rushed to reload her weapon. From scaled feet, the scout held two heavily-armored dwarven corpses.
Black tendrils raced out from my fingers as I studied the scene. I didn't know Holter's plan, but I also couldn't leave him to it alone. Dozens of mushy corpses assembled, but some were so ruined that they could only crawl, pulling soupy bodies forward while sloughing off bits of muscle and tissue over stone.
As my gory army crawled and shambled toward the landing, Holter swooped down from stories above, the two corpses still in his grasp. One mage prepared a ball of lightning as she watched him barrel toward them, but it dispelled as a carbon arrow killed her. Holter was a blur of black as he flew over Golda and her soldiers with the corpses dangling from his talons, dragging them through the group like heavy pendulums. Bodies collided with the crunch of bone. Previously robust life guards flickered and dissipated. It knocked mages over the half-wall to the courtyard. Golda's magical guard dulled as it hit her, and then the stout woman was thrown back to the ground of the landing and out of my sight.
I sent my corpses forward, and they swarmed the newly incapacitated foes. I called for even more aid, and tendrils swept through the area, two of them slinking into the oozlum-kin's corpse cargo. As Holter finished his sweep and flew higher to turn around, the two busted corpses dangling from his feet hissed with battle lust and reached out in desperation of blood.
Explodis a agua. I propelled the magic over the heads of my corpses and to the landing where it exploded in a gush of water over recovering foes and the crate of explosives alike. Though I was unfamiliar with explosives and how they worked, I hoped the water would render the rest of Golda's ammo useless since it used fire to detonate.
Holter dragged his two eager corpses through the landing area a second time, knocking over soldiers who were just standing up again. Golda's life shield finally flickered out. The rabid zombie Holter carried by its foot grabbed onto a woman in its excitement for battle, and it pulled her with it as it bit deep into the soft flesh between her neck and shoulder. Realizing he carried too much weight, Holter dropped the little undead trooper and its prize so it could continue to feed.
My corpses swarmed Golda's entourage, but I wanted to kill the regent myself. I pushed through the undead and climbed the castle's steps, putting a few injured mages out of their misery with death magic. I raised a hand in the air, signaling Holter to retreat. Golda struggled to get up in the landing's center, but her heavy armor fought against the move. As I reached the crest of the stairway, Golda stilled and glared at me.
“Curse ya,” she spat angrily, grabbing one of the soaked explosives from the stone nearby where it had fallen out of the crate from all the recent chaos. With her other hand, she pulled out a matchbook. I stood over her and watched as she lit the match and put the fire to the fuse. It seemed water wasn't the perfect solution to explosives after all, for the ammo lit easily. Though it confused Golda why I didn't immediately kill her, she sat up and quickly loaded her launcher as she continued, “Sidin' with the dead over the livin', ya are. What kind of person does that? What kind of leader?”
I reached out to the steel of her launcher and calmly convinced it to degrade into metallic sand. Golda's nostrils flared as her weapon dismantled itself. As she hyperventilated with sudden realization and fear, I replied, “Not yours.”
I grabbed the near half-wall with a hand and hopped over it, landing on the upper courtyard with a jolt. The fizzling of a burning fuse was only overrode by Golda's mumbling pleas and panicked breaths as I hurried away from the castle. Falling metal echoed as her launcher fell into pieces over stone, and then I turned to look back.
BOOM!
A pillar of fire, black powder, broken armor, flesh, and blood erupted over the landing, and the resulting shock wave forced bodies both living and dead back from the castle. Corpses still gnawing and fighting scrambled to return to battle, some of them newly shredded by shrapnel. Mutilated parts rained over the upper courtyard of varying shapes and sizes, still bubbling and hissing with recent burns. Seeing such injuries on the corpses reminded me of my own wound, and I reached up to my face, healing the skin as I waited for further explosions triggered by the blast.
They never came. I couldn't understand how such brutal alchemy worked, but now was not the time to ponder. Narangar's takeover ended just as bloody as it began, but the important fact was that it was over. I'd successfully taken two of Chaire
l's major settlements and pacified another. Sera was next, and Sera was last.
I thought of Terran. I thought of him, his family, his troubles, and his fears. Somehow, I knew that no matter where Terran was and what he was doing, he was thinking of me. I wondered if such thoughts angered or saddened him or filled him with a motivation to end me. Perhaps it was a mixture of all the above. I wondered this because thoughts of him didn't affect me much at all anymore. It could be different when facing Terran in battle later, but I thought of my brother and felt nothing.
Given enough time and chaotic circumstances, even the closest connections can sever. It took a weight off my shoulders, for when I killed Terran, perhaps it wouldn't be as painful as I'd often imagined. Regardless, that day was rapidly approaching.
Thirty-three
26th of High Star, 431
Narangar's harbor appeared so vastly different from what I remembered, for I watched the waters of the inlet from the coast. Despite my attack of this place just over nine years ago, the nostalgia I felt revisiting the view was tinged with the strangeness of new circumstances and perspectives.
The attack on this harbor had taken place on the 13th of High Star, 422, and the timing of our takeover assured that the weather sought to mimic my memories. Between the rising mountains on either side of the curved defensive inlet, rays of sunshine nudged their way through surrounding shadows, kissing the delightfully crystal clear, turquoise waters with a sparkle. It allowed us peeks at aquatic green mosses and tan and pink corals that waved beneath calm rippling waters. Dwarven warships aligned the docks that stretched along both mountainsides, creaking with a breeze which blew inland from the sea with a hollow whistle. They equipped some iron-sided battleships with the new long-ranged cannons invented after my attack years ago to utilize the defenses at sea. The destruction of Olympia's wall came to mind, and I couldn't imagine the damage such cannons could do to ships.