V3Ch98-Battle of the Charnel Fortress Part 3

In the courtyard, Black Hailgrim’s eyes widened.

He had seen something impossible, blinked, and then witnessed more impossibility.

That man vanished. Spatial magic can’t do that anymore. That power was legendary, or perhaps mere myth. But Hailgrim had seen what he’d seen. Someone had the lost skill, “Teleport.” And what was more, he had used it to bring a bunch of horrendous monsters into battle with him… before disappearing. Which meant more danger around the next corner, no doubt.

Hailgrim’s eyes reflexively darted to Mischa, confirming she was all right way over at the northwestern corner.

As he looked, he saw the swamp mage turn the earthen barrier blocking access to the northwestern barracks into mush. He couldn’t help but smile slightly, despite all the peril around them.

As a young man, he’d been more comfortable amid the grim spectacles of battle than in polite society. That was part of how he’d wound up with his name.

Now that he’d outgrown those feelings, though, there was still something wholesome in the experience of warfare… when he could witness those he’d trained finally begin to come into their own.

That was supposed to be you, Chad, he thought sadly. And you, Samara…

He turned back to where the handful of monsters had appeared and opened his mouth to shout a warning.

Somehow, no one else seemed to have noticed the sudden appearance of a bunch of undead monstrosities: a sort of giant worm creature made of dead bodies, a sort of giant spider monster with legs that were clearly just sharpened bone, a similar being crafted in the style of a giant scorpion, a bunch of hulking creatures that appeared to be formed from the combined corpses of three men each, with six arms, six legs, and three heads each - and among those monstrosities, an armored woman on horseback wielding a glaive. She would have seemed like the odd one out - an ordinary young woman, though with silver hair - except for her glowing red eyes and the fact that her horse’s eyes glowed purple, and its hooves emanated a strange purple fire.

Before Hailgrim could say anything, though, the creatures made their presence known.

There must have been a blow from one of them too fast for the warrior to track, because he couldn’t see any of the undead as being responsible for what happened.

All in a row, a dozen soldiers’ bodies jerked as if struck by a sudden impact. Then they disintegrated.

“Oh, gods! Monsters!”

“They’re in the courtyard!”

The cries went up while Hailgrim’s mouth went dry.

His first instinct was to jump in. The problem was that he didn’t know what had happened, or how.

Still, his body started moving before his mind could catch up to the situation.

That was always the way with him, an instinct that had been honed over the years against his will.

Gods damn you, William, he thought as he recognized what he was doing. When did this become my reflex? How in Kur did you teach me to act like you… even after it got you killed?

At the same time, he was assessing the situation before him.

The undead worm-thing - no, a centipede? It was covered in limbs honed into blades - was grabbing people with some of its non-blade limbs and then hacking them up with the bladed appendages. Once grabbed, the victims’ movements seemed to slow down.

Paralyzing Touch?

At the same time, the bone spider monster was clashing blades with three spearmen at once, its long sickle limbs somehow evenly matched against wood and steel. The giant scorpion monster was stinging soldiers with its long tail and pinching off arms and legs from those it had first caught.

The juggernaut monsters were fighting with multiple limbs - thick flesh and bone attached together and reinforced for appendages denser and stronger than any natural humanoid would possess - against steel, crushing helms in its massive paws.

The silver-haired cavalrywoman was skewering people with her glaive, and they seemed to suddenly change behavior in the moment before death, lowering their guards.

Despite all the trouble the sudden attack in the middle of the courtyard was causing, though, the experienced professionals, despite their obvious fear, remained combat ready.

The soldiers shouted out warnings, formed up into units, and counter-attacked using shields, spears, maces, axes, swords, and stranger weapons - or in rarer cases hurling bolts of magic. They appeared to be doing meaningful damage.

But that was only to the visible threat.

Hailgrim could sense the greatest threat in the room was not traceable by the naked eye.

As he rushed in, his mind trying to grasp what was happening, twenty men huddled together crumbled to dust.

This time, it was definitely obvious that whatever was happening, it was none of the undead he could see responsible for it. They were all active, fighting - crushing humans underfoot, dueling with their leg-blades against spears and shields, or skewering mages with a glaive in the case of that horseback-mounted woman.

But none of them had been close to, or paying attention to, the group that had collapsed into dust.

If this continues, the soldiers’ defensive efforts will end up being worthless, Hailgrim calculated. They seemed like they could trade blows evenly with the normal undead. This invisible creature was something else. That was where he needed to direct his focus.

Spectral Sight! The skill was a certain way of shifting mana into the eyes and focusing. It was meant for intangible spirits, mainly, as Hailgrim understood it.

He wasn’t a scholar or a student of the abstract nature of skills, just a fighter. He just knew what it had been useful for in his past and what the monks he trained with had told him.

And as he scanned the surroundings again, with the skill active, he still found that he couldn’t see anything. No, wait, actually, he saw several spirits moving through the walls. His head swiveled to follow them.

There are a ton of those things. I thought Samara and the others exorcised the Fort… And what in Kur are they doing?

It looked like they were just roaming aimlessly through the walls.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw something. His head snapped back to look, but whatever it was - it seemed to have a green glint - had vanished. Another dozen people crumbled to dust before his eyes.

All right, definitely not the spirits. And we can’t keep taking losses like that. At this rate…

He saw it again, and this time, it was right in his line of sight.

A green energy had formed into the shape of a scythe and carved through another group of people, some mages and warriors standing in a guarded position.

It seemed as if armor didn’t stop whatever this was.

Hailgrim poured more mana into his eyes, and he saw it more clearly. The scythe had vanished from his perspective, but it wasn’t quite gone. It had just turned almost invisible as the wielder powered it down slightly between swings. Between kills.

He still couldn’t see the creature wielding the scythe, only the weapon itself, but Hailgrim found himself charging again despite that, mana surging into his sword. He didn’t know if this was going to work, but people were dying around him. It was over a hundred now, with this reaper and the other undead, but the massive scythe was doing the lion’s share of the work so far. Someone had to do something, and Hailgrim might be the only one who could.

Hailgrim swung, anticipating the exact moment when the monster’s movement pattern suggested it would strike again.

His mana-infused blade and the scythe collided in midair, and Hailgrim’s ears rang with the metal on metal sound. The impact forced him to take a couple of steps backward. Whatever this monster was, it was physically stronger than himself.

Despite the situation, he grinned. Physical strength wasn’t everything. He had blocked the attack, despite the enemy clearly being stronger than himself.

And the scythe hadn’t turned him to ash on contact. That was a good start. He could work with this.

***

Dero managed to direct the first dozen projectiles launched her way into another Dark Hole. She would try not to overuse that, since it was more costly than just teleporting out of the way of attacks, but she couldn’t help it. As long as Vidalia and Samara were in the line of fire, she had to be careful what she let slip past her.

Stuck on bodyguard duty again, she thought, shaking her head.

“Give me Sevenhills, and no one has to get hurt!” she yelled.

“Fuck you, and your whole elven kingdom!” shouted a teenage male voice. “I won’t go quietly, even if you split open my skull. We’re here on an important mission. The gods are watching!”

Sweet Mudo, I thought one of those attacks was a fireball. That confirms it. The kid’s even more naive than his sister, and five times as stubborn!

“I’m not here from the elves, kid—” She shook her head and cut herself off midsentence. Persuading him didn’t matter.

“I don’t… what’s…” Dominic’s voice trailed off. There was a lot of yawn in his tone, so Dero knew immediately what had happened.

Thank you, Vidalia.

“The kid just fell over!” exclaimed one of the officers.

“Put him down behind us, the General said he’s important!” ordered another.

Dero hurled a trio of void daggers at the same moment the Dark Hole went down. She managed to look backward at the same time the next round of attacks flew from the enemies.

Samara looked like she had Vidalia well covered, and the paladin was even slowly backing the foxgirl down the hall.

Yes! The further you get from me, the more I can cut loose.

She used Teleport to get in close and avoid the attacks.

As she reached out to grab Dominic by the hand, an axe swung down, so quickly that she had to jerk back. A spear stabbed toward her midriff, and she spun to the side, a little shock of fear running through her at the awareness of how close the attack had come to her stomach.

Her abdomen was still almost perfectly flat - elven pregnancies were painfully slow compared with human and especially beastfolk ones - but she was pregnant.

I’m not losing this child. No.

She gritted her teeth and threw a punch at the man in front of her. She was too close to the kid to throw void daggers casually. One dodge, and she would have killed the target herself. Mariella seemed like she might hold a grudge about a thing like that.

Her knuckles hit soft flesh, and the man in front of her doubled over, face red. She kneed him in the nose and rose to her feet as he sank to the ground. She extended a hand, reaching out for the boy again.

Then she spun to the side as a javelin planted itself in the wall beside where she’d just been standing.

And stepped just to the right of another axe swing. Because of course that hadn’t come from the one she’d disabled a moment ago.

I’m too close, Dero thought in dismay. I wasn’t made for these situations.

The hall beside the blocked stairwells fairly bristled with weapons and projectiles for the next few minutes, all of them aimed at her.

A blade sliced through the air and actually managed to open a cut on her arm when she moved just a hair too slowly.

Every footstep was a dodge or a spin or a near split as she ducked underneath something. Slowly, she gave ground and let them begin to pursue her down the hall.

Sorry, Mariella. I might have to disappear in a minute. Regroup. This is getting too close.

What was worse, at some point, they figured out what she had been looking for all the time.

“The kid’s important to them! Use him as a shield!”

One of these officers was perceptive.

Sure enough, one of those in the front line grabbed Dominic’s sleeping form and propped him up in front of himself, really deciding to just go with the idea of treating one of their own as a human shield.

Do you assholes want to piss me off? Because this kind of shit is how you wind up with holes in your heads. Then even Tybalt probably can’t help you.

Dero allowed herself to be pressed further backward, giving ground as the volume of attacks capable of injuring her remained steady and each individual weapon swing or magical blast brushed too close to her for comfort. Blood dripped down much too quickly from the one wound she’d actually suffered, and the dark elf realized that she couldn’t feel that arm.

Poison?

Again, she seriously considered fleeing. A quick scan of her surroundings with Perfect Spatial Awareness even revealed that Samara and Vidalia had vanished from the hallway. Either they had hidden in one of the chambers that lined the hall, or they were now at the very end of the hallway under the protection of the high elves.

There was no one Dero needed to stand here and protect with her body.

But some part of her refused.

Mariella’s distressed face loomed large in her mind.

It’s not about her, she thought. It’s these people. Fuck these people. Using a kid they’re supposed to be protecting as a human shield. I won’t back down to the likes of them.

Physically, she continued to give ground, retreating slowly backward down the hallway.

Suddenly, as multiple attacks from up the hall shot toward her, limiting her range of motion, Dero’s Perfect Spatial Awareness detected something from behind her.

The dark elf spun to react, daggers instantly forming above her wrists.

Then a pair of arms grabbed hold of her.

***

In the mess hall, Staff Sergeant Lepidus pressed his way through the other men crowded around the door.

He could hear men in the courtyard screaming, and as he reached the openings in the mess hall’s walls that served as windows and ventilation, his eyes widened. A group of men just in front of them had turned to dust before his eyes.

“Hey, what the fuck’s going on?” he demanded of a few men around him.

Two of them stepped back nervously at his tone.

One snapped to attention and saluted.

“Something invisible is attacking, Staff Sergeant!” he barked immediately.

“Why the fuck aren’t we helping them, then?” Lepidus replied instantly.

“We can’t see what’s out there, Staff Sergeant!” exclaimed one of those who had been intimidated a moment ago, Private Francesco.

“Look at him, numb nuts!” Lepidus replied. He pointed a thumb through the window.

The legendary warrior Black Hailgrim was outside. Darting around, swinging his sword, standing in front of groups of soldiers, seemingly at random. But there was an obvious logic to his movements. He could see what they were dealing with, at least well enough to keep some of the blows from landing.

Or maybe it was just the man’s years of training and experience, allowing him to narrow down where the enemy was launching attacks from based on which soldiers had been struck already.

“We can’t see what he sees, Staff Sergeant!” Francesco objected again.

“We don’t have to!” Lepidus snapped. “Just attack based on Hailgrim’s movements. Someone - no, we have to back him up!”

The trio of men followed him as Staff Sergeant Lepidus strode through the doors. Another handful of men took initiative and joined them, then another group who had been lurking by the doors. As they passed through the hall and entered the courtyard, another five took courage and stepped up.

General Caracalla’s elites were proactive, and even if they’d been spooked by an invisible monster attacking, they weren’t about to run from a fight if there was any chance of winning.