Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

The irked Gotrok ordered the line forward once again. Mark and Volley shot out once more before the lugians could hurl their loads, and more Summons dropped, thinning their lines further as they strove to get into range.

Amusingly, the wind picked up again, and the arcing rocks again fell short as it surged over and past the archers, whose shots were only aided by it, and on a much flatter trajectory anyway.

A quarter of the Summons were dead as the lugians again drew within range and hurled out their rocks.

The wind let up abruptly, and the volley sailed completely over the walls and past them, smashing impotently into the ground behind them. The fake chorozite seemed to gleam nastily in the Silver Light from above, and then fell apart and was gone a couple breaths later.

There was the sound of a great bell, and a flash of Silver. The center line of lugian Summons howled and were blown completely off their feet, writhing tendrils of Silver lightning digging through them with all the condemnation of the angry sky as the Thunderbolt detonated among them. They hit the ground, rolled, and did not move as they began to Burn.

The Tukora behind them all flinched at the display of magic. The commanders were still out of the range of Isparian War Magic and they knew it, so the reach and range of the Lightning had caught them completely off-guard.

Which was about when the dozen Lightning Bolts, thoughtfully mixed with Isparian Silver Scarab-level magic for that additional kick, crackled out and tore across the lines of the Gotrok in dancing supernatural colors from Ryin’s students. Without Vulns, the Bolts weren’t quite strong enough to kill… but the electricity dancing over them was a fine Mark for the waiting Archers.

The volley was spread over hundreds of targets this time, and it had the desired effect. This time the dead were piled in massive swaths of Burning corpses, and the panicking Tukora… ordered a charge.

Briggs’ hairy eyebrows rose in some disbelief as the Summons bellowed, pulling massive chorozite weapons wrought in the lugian style out of nowhere, and came thundering towards the main gates.

“Mark the Tukora who get in range and kill them,” he ordered idly, seeing dozens of extremely stout ladders being hauled forwards by younger, living lugians with some enthusiasm.

His words were not received well by the Tukora officers racing forward with their soldiers, as suddenly Faerie Fires popped up around them from ready Casters, and a whole lot of electricity was aimed their way.

They dove for cover behind their Summons, who moved to shield their officers unflinchingly. It was hard to direct their troops well when they were scattering for cover from deadly shots, however…

And they forgot about the Thunderbolts from above, simply not having any familiarity with the concept and killing power of Area of Effect magic.

The scores of Summoned lugians concentrated on the gates and starting to pound on them with tremendous force would get through them, there was no doubt. The chorozite weapons in active hands could overcome the ley line reinforcement soon enough, and the enhanced stone would shatter and give way…

Um, unless the person responsible for making said gates in the first place was on station on the wall right above them, and Shaping them back into perfect form far faster than they could be hammered and chipped apart.

The Summons didn’t have any analytical ability to realize that hacking on the doors was fruitless. Chips and gouges in them were fixed even as they pulled back their picks and hammers. The living lugians could have realized it, but they were busy finding cover, and, well...

Heaven came directly down upon that gathering of hapless Summons, a great bell tolling their Doom and the judgment of Thunder.

Scores of massive bodies went flying, including a few officers who’d joined the press for protection. They were pretty much the only ones left alive as the bodies of the Summons went sprawling, and the Archers watching from overhead made sure they didn’t get back to their two-toed feet.

Ignoring the deaths, more Summons swarmed in to take up the task of beating down the gates, while bellowed orders from the incoming ladder-bearers assured them of paths to the walls.

Lightning crackled in Bolts, and arcs of electricity gathered to join them. The living Gotrok were brave and grit their teeth in the face of the onslaught, more Summons moving to ward them as they rumbled for the walls. In clearly rehearsed tandem, the ladders were planted, rotated up, and came crashing down across nearly a thousand feet of frontage.

With enthusiastic bellows, the Summons surged up the ladders, their weight alone making it almost impossible to throw the ladders aside.

Mages stepped up in front of the ladders, just out of sight of the rock throwers from below who were attempting to counter-snipe the archers driving electricity into their numbers. Circles of force came up around their hands, Silver and Gold Scarab spells waiting calmly as the first of the lugians came surging up to the edges of the battlements.

They weren’t too bright, but seeing a single Caster there waiting for them, instead of a cluster of spears, startled the climbers, and their dull eyes fixed on the one opponent as they made to get onto the stone top of the wall and make way for the eager Summons right behind them.

The Bludgeoning damage version of Isparian Magic was called Shock Wave, and it manifested as a ring of white force energy that dumped crushing impacts into the target, internalizing the damage much like a perfectly efficient impact from a hammer. If it didn’t have the full kinetic impact of a Weapon, it instead applied what energy it did have much more smoothly.

And then Toppling was added to the mix.

The Summons had a firm, strong grip on the ladder as the spell hit him, and he was smashed backwards as if hit by a Jotun’s hammer square in the chest.

It was a scene repeated across the length of the wall. Clutching their ladders, the bellowing lugian climbers were hurled over backwards, leverage working against the lugians bracing the ladder below, and all of the siege ladders were knocked over backwards, sending their climbers sprawling.

Those who’d been holding the ladders were generally knocked sprawling, too, and looked up as the Archers above sighted down on them and released at effectively point-blank range.

The Summons weren’t smart enough to use the ladders of their own accord, and certainly not with the rehearsed smoothness of the living. The young and eager Gotrok ready to scale the walls died quickly, and the siege of the walls of Mayoi faltered almost instantly.

Another Thunderbolt crashed down at the great gates, and more Summons screamed and were hurled away, Burning and dying. The great gates stood there unmarred, white ground gleaming before them, only the scattered corpses of a few living lugians indicating there had been any attack there at all.

“Over and at them,” Briggs growled, and led the elite strikers over the wall in an illusion-veiled rush and surge at the far end of their line.

You fight a long line with a sweep. The lugians outnumbered them, sure, with thousands of the Summons drawn from across the mountains and Dungeons to here. But they were scattered and spread out over a long, narrow line right now, with the Gotrok wondering if it was worth it to grab up the ladders and try again after being thrown off them so easily.

The Stoneholders, paramounts, and elite infantry, wearing armor far finer than anything the Gotrok or their Summoned troops bore, vaulted and leapt cleanly over the edge of the wall, a shimmery haze forming a wall of Nothing Happening Here masking the maneuvering as they hit the ground one after the other, rapidly forming up into a wedge and wall of over two hundred combatants with crackling Lightningphasing Weapons, ready to do their thing!

“TREMBLE.”

The word echoed like thunder in the air, and the lugians all jerked at the bloodsoaked grimness beneath that word.

“You cannot run, do not flee, your death beckons for you.

The lies you wrought and oaths you broke have come to take their due.

Lightning shakes the skies, Thunder takes your lies,

And Heaven, Heaven knows what is true.

TREMBLE, oh OH ohhhhhh TREMBLE, WE COME!”

Their attack roared out of the illusion, and the elite infantry of north and south fell upon the flank of the lugian line.

“SLAUGHTER! Here is the quarter that you earned!

DEATH! No second life, and no return!

BLOOD! It is time to feed the Land!

SOULS! BURN NOW WHERE YOU STAND!

TREMBLE! Oh OH ohhhhh TREMBLE, WE COME!”

And they died.

Thin and extended, the Gotrok were out of position and out of command, and could not respond properly as the melee combatants drove in upon them. Two, three, four, or more crackling Weapons scythed through them, and the Summoned fell with appalling speed. Scarce were they aware of the attack coming before it had already reached them, and gray-skinned corpses were falling violently to a crackling swarm of Weaponry that was offering no quarter at all.

Horns started blowing frantically, met by the tonals of Thunder from overhead. Here and there, some officers who’d hung back far enough to see what was going on over across the northern flank tried to call their Summons into positions, get them into a working line which might be able to take the charge and hacking death rolling over the side of the formation.

Those groups made great targets for Thunderbolts, and those Tukora commanders great targets for waiting Archers ready as the rocks being thrown at them faltered under conflicting priorities.

The Summons were dominated by the lower orders of lugians, easily half of them copies of lugians who had never reached the skill of true Gotrok warriors. Such novices died with great speed to the focused power, speed, and magic ripping through them, barely able to defend themselves.

More adept Summons in better armor, sturdier and stronger, might last a few more seconds, but the wolfpack tactics of those coming gave them no openings and no relief, hitting them and continuing on. Their chorozite weapons might have been made of a fairly light metal, but they were oversized and almost purely metal, and so they were heavy and slow and left many openings in their defenses, while the attackers knew every place their armor was weak and struck there without remorse.

This wasn’t a duel, and it wasn’t even a swarming skirmish. The melees were streaming past the lugian invaders, striking and going on to the next, uncaring if they brought one down immediately, for those coming after were going to finish up for them. In addition, as they rolled down the wall, the archers were even hopping up on the battlements to get proper perches to rain their own arrows down and join the fun.

In particular, arrows carrying vivus were plunging into each dying real lugian, making sure that they weren’t going to be coming back from whatever version of a resurrection method was still accessible to them… nor by enslavement to the System, if that was a factor.

In the front of this effort were Princess Kristie Rantha and Briggs.

The warriors who’d been reluctant about following the towering Ancient shut up completely when they saw his Hammer at work. Lugians were incredibly tough, strong, and thick-boned, and liked to wear heavy breastplates, able to take heavy impacts without flinching and give them right back. Pounding on one another was almost a racial pastime.

None of those stood up to the incredible power of the solid blue Lightning that was his Hammer. It crashed into lugians, smashing them off their feet as if they were bowling pins. They went tumbling in the grassy field, or slammed hard into the unyielding stone of the wall, or just plain went airborne and those below had to look out for falling lugian.

The Gotrok didn’t know what was tossing around their people either, and they could only stare as the massive bodies of their own were hurled about like children…