Nobody stood atop the outer palisade. Nathan looked down the valley from the central gatehouse, which was the highest point of the wall. Behind him were his soldiers and summons. Ditches, low-standing wooden barricades, and barbed stakes lined the descent to the bottom of the clearing.
Down there was the beginning of the demonic invasion. Dozens of demons crowded around the craggy rocks near the portal. Every minute or so, another would slowly fade into existence. At first each demon appeared colorless and fuzzy, but they regained their form over the course of ten seconds or so. They would look at their bestial hands and arms, feel their face and body. Then they would pull a weapon of some form out of thin air and join their brethren.
“Shouldn’t we be clearing them out?” Sen asked. She wandered up next to him.
“Ordinarily, yes. But I don’t know when the portal will tear itself open. If one of us is down there when it happens, we’d be overwhelmed in seconds.” Nathan shook his head. “A hundred demons or so is nothing compared to what will come.”
“You’re really boosting my morale,” Sen remarked.
She had adjusted her uniform since joining him. In place of the cloak and rough bandit armor was a black and silver Champion’s uniform and a red coat that fell to her thighs. Her breastplate gleamed and stuck out noticeably less than Fei’s. A thin strip of tanned skin peeked out at him between her leather skirt and armored greaves.
When he didn’t respond to her, Sen made another remark, “I expected there to be bigger walls here. And more summons. Kind of surprised how lightly you’re taking this.”
“I’m not taking it lightly.” Nathan pointed to the sky. “In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t our world. Building anything in here requires a lot more power from the binding stone. Given I don’t know how big the invasion will be, I need to keep a stock of power in reserve for my sorcery.” He shrugged. “Besides, unless I build the walls large enough, the demons will jump right over them.”
“Oh. So how do we fight them?”
“To make it clear, we fight them.” Nathan gestured to the two of them and grimaced at the soldiers massing below them.
“… they’ll die if they fight the demons, won’t they?” Sen asked, staring out at Anna’s soldiers.
“In droves. They don’t have the training or equipment. With enough time I’ll turn them into knights capable of going toe-to-toe with demons, but for the most part it’s smarter to use summons,” Nathan explained.
Sen watched the soldiers prepare the catapults and ballistae for the coming invasion, while Nathan remained silent. Those soldiers who weren’t manning siege weapons carried halberds. Not a single bow was in sight.
“What if they break through?” Sen asked.
“The soldiers pull back, and we fight the demons where they are,” Nathan said. Sen gave him a look of disbelief. “That’s why I have power in reserve. I can create more summons if necessary.”
They watched for several long minutes. Demons continued to mass below them. Preparations continued.
Fei joined them. Kuda was trying to contact Vera, but having little success. The sapphire in Fei’s collarbone glimmered in the soft light of the world around them.
Nathan tapped into the leylines and confirmed that they were not disrupted anymore.
“That doesn’t bode well,” he muttered.
“Do we need to do anything?” Fei asked.
Nathan called up a soldier and gave them an order, “Tell Kuda that the leylines aren’t disrupted. He’ll know what to do.”
“Sir,” the soldier snapped out, then ducked out of the portal.
“You have a plan for this?” Sen asked.
“Precautions, mostly. Kuda’s fairly sharp.”
“Sharp doesn’t begin to cut it,” Sen muttered. “The man doesn’t need a knife to cut steak. He can use his mind.”
By the time two hundred demons had gathered in the clearing, something began to happen. The air above the mound of rocks seemed to distort. Nathan saw black cracks form in mid-air, and strange gases appeared.
“Don’t look directly at it,” Nathan muttered.
“You’ve told us a thousand times,” Fei said.
The world roared, and a ten-meter-high hole in the world snapped open. Nathan shifted his gaze slightly to the right. Despite this, a sharp pain built up behind his eyes and he was forced to look away completely.
He grabbed Fei and physically turned her head away. She whined, but he had seen her ears flatten and knew she had ignored him.
The portal had opened. A tear in space that slowly oscillated between black and white, shaped like a tear drop. Bestial yelling resounded across the valley, bouncing off the cliffs. The demonic horde poured in.
“I didn’t think it would hurt this much,” Sen said, covering her eyes.
“It shouldn’t normally.” Nathan bit his lip and glanced back, covering one eye.
The horde wasn’t that large. Maybe five or six hundred at most. More would arrive in time, but this was in line with expectations.
But a portal that caused this harsh of a migraine usually came with a larger horde.
In fact, they usually came with a Messenger. Nathan grimaced. Surely one wouldn’t arrive this early. Kadria had dismissed his concerns, stating that no Messenger would waste their time on such a small feast.
He didn’t point out the fact she seemed pretty focused on feasting on a particular part of him.
Nathan raised an arm. A hush fell over the soldiers behind him. They could see the portal and hear the demons, but not see them.
They waited for Nathan’s order.
“All forces, fire at will!”
Chapter 23
Boulders tumbled overhead, barely visible against the darkness of the sky. They slammed into the approaching horde. The demons kept charging uphill, even as dozens of them were crushed beneath the tumbling rocks. Their war cries grew in intensity.
More demons collapsed on the front lines, ballista bolts sticking out from their chests and heads. Their brethren trampled them. The automaton ballistae let out an endless series of thunks and plinks as they fired their stream of bolts. Their mechanisms whirred noisily as they reloaded. Larger ballista bolts soared over the wall and into the enemy, spearing several demons at once.
“More of them,” Sen gasped.
Another mass of demons spilled out of the portal. The tear in reality fluctuated wildly but emitted no light onto the volcanic rock surrounding it. The new demons wasted no time in summoning their weapons and joining the reckless charge toward the keep.
“Don’t worry about their reinforcements. Just cast,” Nathan said. “Fei, pick a group of demons and stall them. But don’t let them surround you.”
“Eh? I can charge into that?” Fei pointed between herself and the hundreds of demons still unharmed by the onslaught of catapults and ballistae.
“They’re only regular demons. You’re a monogem Champion now. Take your sapphire out for a whirl.” Nathan ruffled her hair.
She stared at him for several moments. Then her tail tocked once. She nodded and leaped down from the wall. Her reckless charge toward the demons kicked up a trail of dust.
Next to Nathan, Sen ignored Fei and instead focused on her spellcasting. A pair of triangles hovered in front of her palms. Two massive orbs of fire appeared in front of each hand, each as wide as Nathan was tall.
No, not fire. Lava. The surfaces of the orbs swam with molten rock, and their interiors were more liquid than fiery.
Sen pumped her arms back and forth in a single motion and let out a “Hah!” The orbs of lava flew across the battlefield. Flames burst out from where they landed, and demons exploded into fiery glory. The lava orbs bounced. A trail of lava dripped from them, igniting demons below the orbs.
With each bounce, more demons melted and collapsed to ground as a pile of burning ash. The beasts fled from the lava oozing along the ground, fearing it. Their charge split along the path of each orb and faltered bri
efly. Boulders crashed into them. More demons went down. For a few brief moments, the demonic assault stumbled.
Then a roar went up from the rear lines. It rippled along the horde. Soon all the demons waved their weapons in the air, their mouths wide open and bellowing their strange language. They charged forward.
Sen held a fist in the air. A pair of squares glowed around it. She cast her fist down.
A meteor turned half of the demons into a smoking crater. Bodies flew. Many of them crashed into the cliffs and some were speared on jagged rocks. Some demons tried to crawl from the crater, their bodies still working despite missing limbs or entire chunks of flesh.
Hundreds more demons spilled forth from the portal, replacing the losses almost instantly.
“Is this normal?” Sen asked. She held her hands together, a single square appearing in front of her.
“Look at how many you’re blowing apart,” Nathan said. “If this wasn’t normal, do you think we’d need trigem or duogem Champions?”
Sen grimaced. “Goddess. How long will this go on for?”
“This wave? Maybe fifteen minutes. The whole invasion? Hopefully just two waves. Maybe three,” Nathan replied. He didn’t mention that this portal felt wrong to him. The actual demonic assault had yet to surprise him, but he disliked the intensity of the portal itself.
Sen’s spell activated and a jet of flame gushed forth. Every demon it touched melted, their bodies blackening instantly.
“I can’t believe how little magic resistance they have,” Sen mumbled.
“I told you that lower rank spells would be your bread and butter. Stick to them. You’ll need to do this for a while.”
On the left flank, Fei made contact with her prey. She grinned and drew her scimitar. The demons screeched at her.
A moment later, their screeches transformed into screams of panic and pain. Blue flames ate at their flesh, armor, and weapons. Fei darted into the mob of beasts, cutting a path through the hulking monsters. Those same blue flames wreathed her scimitar and coated her entire body.
When her sword touched a demon, it melted its flesh as if it were butter. Molten droplets of red and black goo pooled on the ground behind Fei. The demons collapsed into pieces. The flames around her body melted weapons before they struck her. Fists and entire arms liquefied like candle wax.
Fei spun through the demons at top speed, whirling around with her sword. Her eyes glimmered, and she suppressed an obvious desire to laugh.
Nathan watched as the demons recoiled in fear. They tried to give her wide berth, but she danced up to them in the blink of an eye. The entire left flank became her playground. The panicking demons barely noticed the boulders and ballista bolts raining down on them.
Hopefully, she didn’t get in over her head. She was using her flames at full intensity. Every swing of her scimitar sent embers flying across the battlefield that could turn a demon into a candle. She was effectively invincible against demons this weak. But the moment she ran out of power in her gem, she’d be crushed by the horde within moments.
Nathan surveyed the battlefield.
The demons slowly pushed forward despite his efforts. Countless more monsters pressed the hesitant front ranks forward, like lemmings pushing their brethren over a cliff and to their deaths.
Except these lemmings might have enough numbers to fill in the chasm beneath the cliff with corpses, thereby making the cliff safe. The demonic horde appeared to be limitless in number.
Leaping over the wall, Nathan drew his sword. A green square shimmered over his hand.
He slashed the air. A hundred meters away, the front rank of demons was sliced in two. Those behind shoved the dismembered bodies out of the way. They charged forward, their bestial faces twisted in fury.
Nathan darted forward. His sword and free hand glowed. The demons stood only meters in front of him. He flung his hands out and unleashed two blasts of wind. Armor shattered, horns crumbled, faces fell in on themselves, and a mass of demons crashed into one another.
Despite the show of power, Nathan quickly found himself surrounded. The demons kept their distance but shuffled around him in a circle. Explosions and bursts of flame disintegrated masses of demons nearby, and blue fire licked up in the distance.
Holding his fist up, Nathan cast a supercharged fourth rank spell. The demons stared at his upraised hand for a moment. Then they bellowed and charged.
Did they even understand what he was doing? Nathan didn’t know or care.
Before they reached him, he unleashed his spell by opening his fist into a palm. Countless blades of wind turned every demon close to him into a gory mess.
Nathan lowered his hand and scanned the battlefield. Nothing had changed, he realized. More and more demons poured forward.
He needed a better way to hold them off. Fei would run out of power soon, and Sen was burning too much power too quickly. If the demons broke through in two places at once, or they overwhelmed someone, this invasion would become a disaster quickly.
Given Nathan worried about a nasty surprise coming later, he wanted to hold off on using the binding stone’s power for as long as possible.
With a flick of his wrist, he propelled himself toward Fei with a gust of wind. His landing was rough, and he tumbled across the rough, broken ground. A jet of blue fire crashed over him.
Fei screamed, “Nathan!”
He waved off her concern. The fire clung to him and felt tingly, but didn’t harm him.
“Gem abilities like yours can’t hurt their own Bastion. Calm down,” he said.
Fei stared at Nathan in shock, the flames dying down around her body. Behind her, the demons saw an opening and charged forward.
Clicking his tongue, Nathan darted forward. His sword shined and blew apart several demons with a gale thrust. Fei turned and melted several others, then pulled Nathan behind her.
“It’s dangerous,” she said. Her flames pushed the demons away. “Why are you out here?”
Nathan gave her a look, but held his tongue. He was her Bastion, not a random soldier. Did she think he was going to collapse because a mere demon got a single hit in?
Instead, he said, “I want to pull back and try something else.” He cast a supercharged fourth rank spell, but held onto it.
“But I’m doing fine,” Fei protested.
Demonic screeching cut off whatever else Fei was going to say. She threw an annoyed look at the intruders, before panic emerged on her face. The approaching horde was larger than before and had spread out while the pair had been distracted.
Nathan swung his sword at the ground between himself and the charging demons. Thunder rang out, and the ground shuddered. A chasm burst into existence. White light blinded Nathan as the chasm reached down to whatever lay beneath this world. The demons tried to halt their charge, but their momentum was too great.
Dozens of demons fell into the chasm. The light prevented Nathan from seeing what happened to them. From experience, he knew that he wouldn’t see them again.
“Let’s go,” Nathan said, grabbing Fei’s hand. She stared at him in shock and followed behind him for a few steps.
The ground shook again, and the chasm began to close. Demons screamed as they were crushed between the walls of earth.
Nathan and Fei didn’t watch. By the time they leaped on top of the wall and rejoined Sen, the demons had already forgotten what had happened.
Not forgotten, Nathan reminded himself. The demons who saw the chasm were probably dead. Almost every one of the hundreds of beasts charging the wall was a newly spawned demon. The portal had spat them all forth in the time it took for the chasm to swallow the hundreds of their brethren.
“Fei, stay still for a second,” Nathan said. He placed a finger against her sapphire and pushed power into it from the binding stone.
Fei’s entire body twitched in shock. She stared at Nathan with wide eyes as he topped her up. When he withdrew his finger, her tongue lolled out of her mouth and her eyes had gla
zed over. She moaned softly.
“Couldn’t you at least wait until after the battle to stick it in her and fill her up?” Sen said with a smirk.
“She was almost empty,” Nathan said, ignoring the innuendo.
“I’m sure she was. After all, you were busy filling me up earlier.” Sen rubbed her belly.
“Do you have to be so lewd?” Nathan said.
Fei blinked and came to her senses. She placed a finger against her sapphire. A satisfied sigh escaped her lips.
“Does the real thing feel that good?” she asked Sen.
Sen glared at Fei. “Why are you asking me?”
Fei tilted her head to one side. Then grinned. “Oh, right. You don’t have a gem. Heh.”
That had to be on purpose, Nathan thought. He decided to intervene before they began to fight each other, instead of the demonic horde that was closing in on the palisade.
“Focus,” he said. “I want the two of you to follow some specific orders. If we pull this off, hopefully the demons will pull back for this wave.”
Nathan hid a frown. Given how long it had been since the start of the invasion, he suspected that the second wave of demons had already attacked. The amount of demons they had killed was far too high for a single wave, but there hadn’t been a noticeable gap in the assault.
“I’m going to deal with the left flank. Sen, I want you to hit anything in the center with rapid-fire spells. Force them to charge up one side of the valley,” he ordered. “Fei, tell the officers to bombard the left flank as well.”
“Won’t that mean they’ll overwhelm the wall on the right side?” Sen asked.
“That’s what I want,” Nathan said. “Fei, once you give out the orders, gather all the hoplites you can and stand behind the wall on the right-hand side. Once the demons break through, crush them.”
Fei grinned. “Oooh. I think I get it.”
Heretic Spellblade Page 20