Siege State

Tom ran for all he was worth once more, straight into the gap Val had sown in the ranks of the orc army. Already, he could see the more densely packed orcs, towards the centre of the army, flowing to fill it. Second by second, it narrowed. Soon, it would be closed.

His foot slipped in a patch of blood- orc or human, he couldn’t tell- and he fell to one knee. He snarled in frustration. A momentary delay could make the difference between being able to fight through to the Smith to join his mother and Val and Rosa, or being cut off, unable to help, fighting regular orcs and the odd Idealist with the rest of the Hunters.

As Tom pushed himself back to his feet, he caught a glimpse of the summer sky, incongruously blue when all around him was a sea of seething, rust red flesh. Instructor Glass and the Lord of Blood were still fighting, the Hunter far more powerful, especially with his dragon familiar, but the ageing Instructor far more nimble.

Tom wrenched his vision back down, fixing it ahead. The gap had closed. Hunters were trying to keep the path clear, fighting valiantly against the orcs, but it was a losing proposition. The orcs had the greater numbers by far. Their only hope was to kill the Smith quickly, rob them of their leadership, and throw them into chaos.

Tom needed to get there. He needed to help. Although there were ranks of orcs in between him and the now-embattled group that had broken through, he might be able to make it still. A determined charge could break through again. And he had just the thing.

Ready, Tom. Always ready, Sesame sent, steady as a boulder. Let’s go.

Tom and Sesame picked up speed. The bear had his armour on, but not his tack, and Tom was beginning to regret it. He had not had enough time to learn how to ride before the battle, and it was a foolish idea to split their already tiny force and mount a cavalry charge when only perhaps six or seven of the Hunters had familiars that could be ridden anyway.

Right now, it would be the perfect thing to smash a hole through to the centre. Tom banished the thought. Sesame was already a wrecking ball. They would be fine. They just had to hurry.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he felt a strange, abrasive feeling wash over him. He immediately felt very slightly weaker, slightly slower. Luckily, the buffs from his poisons and from the other Hunters were still running strong, and they allowed him a split second reaction to lean backwards at the waist and avoid a thrown rock.

It had come from his right, and a quick glance showed him the head of an orc to his left exploding in a cloud of pink mist.

Tom skidded, turned and braced, his training, enhanced reflexes, and aerial view from Sere all coming together. Another rock whizzed past in front of him, disappearing into the crush.

Tom faced a massive orc. It was not so big as the chieftain, but was clearly a forged Idealist. It stalked towards him, a crude satchel of rocks at one hip. In one hand, it palmed another fist sized stone. In the other, it held a chipped sword. It looked more like a long dagger in the beast’s grip.

Its form appeared to stutter, and two things happened at once: a rock was suddenly rocketing through the air towards his head, and the orc was suddenly ten feet to the right, and slightly closer.

Tom leant sideways, quick as a whip, and the rock sailed harmlessly past again.

Whatever Ideal this orc had, it was dangerous. Whatever debuff it had placed on him had not triggered Sweet Suffering, but Tom barely even considered it. All he knew was that it was slowing him down. He would not allow it.

He waited, relaxed, ready. Another rock came, another stutter-step. Tom immediately dodged again, and cast Hush. Two of Sere’s bodies flapped at the orc’s face, distracting it, and by the time it had cleared them away, he had closed with it.

Tom struck out with his spear, recovered after his fight with the chieftain, and stabbed deep into the surprised orc’s hip. It let out a silent roar of anguish, and swung its sword at him wildly, forcing him back.

A moment later, it had disappeared. Sesame, who had been lumbering up behind it, skidded to a stop. Sere picked the orc up again for him. It had reappeared a short distance away, to their right, back towards the rear of the army.

The orc must have had some skill to shorten the effect of debuffs on itself. Tom was torn. It would be utterly foolish to leave this enemy at his back while he ran, and yet everything in him screamed to make it to the Smith as fast as possible.

He compromised. Sus and Sol dove from the air, plummeting towards the orc, talons outstretched. Tom waited, trying to act as though he was simply preparing to dodge another stone.

The owls impacted, a split second apart from each other. The orc staggered, and the two owls wheeled back into the sky. Great gashes lay open, glistening, all over the orc’s neck and chest and shoulders.

Fuck you! Sus screeched.

Yeah… Sol lamented.

The orc was dead on its feet. Tom turned to run.

More orcs had flowed in, to surround the fight in the centre of the army. Tom could see flashes of skills, but could not see what was happening. He could hear desperate battle joined, but could not see which way the tide was flowing. He had to make it. He was almost there. He picked out his first target, readied Sesame to roar.

Suddenly, his leg went completely numb, and he tumbled to the ground. He had been running at full pace, and he slid along the ground. Sesame stopped again, confused.

Tom tried to force himself to stand, and found his leg not working at all. He felt around the back of his thigh and his hands came back slippery with blood. A large rock lay to his side, slick and red.

Fuck, he thought, frantically splitting some more of his attention back to Sere. She found the Idealist he had been fighting quick enough: dead, now, but it had obviously had enough gusto for one last throw.

His femur was broken. Shattered, he suspected, not just fractured. The pain was roaring to life, asserting itself over the adrenaline. He felt like vomiting.

He was so close! The centre was right in front of him. If he could slaughter his way through fifteen orcs, give or take, he would break through. If no others filled in the gaps. If none replaced those he killed. If he didn’t get dragged into any other fights with Idealists.

Despair rolled in. He had hoped to save his miracle mouse in case he needed it to help kill the Smith, or once they’d assassinated him, and the army panicked. He would have to use it now. He sent his mind to his spatial storage, but…

But stopped. He felt something strange. The pain was receding already. He could feel his foot again. How was he healing so quickly? A buff from one of the Hunters fighting around him?

No! It was his pinnacle skill! His aura! Wild Hunter usually had such a small effect that he only noticed it over long fights. It only did a trivial amount of damage, and healed by the same amount, all said and done. But when there were this many orcs nearby, every one of them being drained slightly…

Pops and cracks sounded from his thigh as fragments of bones slid back together and fused. Tom hauled himself up. More cracks sounded from his leg, but it held him. He stepped once, twice, and still it held. There was no pain. It was healed again.

It was just in time. While he lay healing, orcs had closed in all around. Tom found himself embroiled in a furious melee. Other Hunters fought nearby, in twos and threes, little pockets of order in a menacing sea of red.

Tom was alone, but for Sesame. The nearest Hunters were not far, but they may as well be on the moon. Tom gauged the distance through the melee to the centre, and more importantly, he took brief stock of how the fight was going. It was difficult to tell, in between fighting off the frenzied attacks of regular orcs, but he could see two things. He knew he couldn’t make it. And the Idealists in the centre were losing.

Tom panicked. He cast Wild Boar Strike into the orcs barring him, and they were knocked back. He rushed forwards, trying to make ground, but was blocked again by a solid mass of bodies in moments.

He called upon Sesame, who unleashed a mighty roar, filling the air with a storm of stone shards. Orcs flinched, dropping in droves, and they still made only several feet headway.

The panic kept rising. He didn’t know what to do. He-

There was a flash of light from the centre of the army, a brief flare like a small sun. It pulsed outwards in a dome, petering out well short of Tom. His intuition told him it was not a good sign, that it was an orc skill.

When the flare died, he was proven right. His birds looked down upon a vision of horror. All of the Hunters that had made it to the centre stood about like sheep. Not completely still, or silently, but utterly without fear, seemingly docile.

The Smith was shouting orders at his Idealists, trying to impose order. Before he managed it, several Hunters had been slaughtered. The Smith didn’t seem overly bothered by the waste, but the chilling thing was that the Hunters didn’t seem to care either. None lifted a hand to defend themselves, or to run. They just stood, absently gazing around, like they’d turned a corner and found themselves on an unexpected, but familiar street, instead of the one they’d meant to take.

Tom’s heart raced. The Smith had done something to them! He needed to get closer. He might be able to free them with Hush. But there were still so many orcs between them, even if the distance was small. And now, without the Hunters in the centre to distract them, all the Smith’s Idealist bodyguards would focus their attention on those further out.

Tom looked further afield, trying to find some sort of hope to salvage the day. What he saw surprised him.

One of the siege orcs had fallen. Tom could just barely make out its massive, prone form, almost buried under regular orcs as they strained to get at the walls, but it was definitely dead. How?

The other, still alive, provided the answer. Several Watchmen were attacking it. The massive creature roared and swatted at them, but the Watch were chosen specifically for speed and precision, and their training only reinforced it. They flitted about, teleporting around the massive orc with an eclectic mix of skills, lashing out at it whenever one of their fellows distracted it. Several more Watchmen slaughtered regular orcs, or engaged Idealists, nearby, desperately trying to give their comrades enough time to pull down the living siege engine.

Not all was lost then. If only Tom could see some way to-

A scream tore the sky. Tom’s head jerked up. Instructor Glass and the Lord of Blood were still fighting, but it looked set to reach a conclusion sooner rather than later. The scream had been a scream of pain. The dragon was not in good shape.

The dragon’s flanks were slick with blood. It was difficult to tell, given the colour of its scales, but the owls could see the rivulets running down its hide from its wounds and raining from it as they fought.

Instructor Glass was a demon. Her face was set in a grim smile, though several new cuts leaked red down her wrinkled visage. She smote the dragon, over and over, with her enormous glass sword. Everytime she struck it, where it cut, it would compact, shrinking, pulling together, dragging and pushing shards of glass into the wounds it sliced open. Once it passed, it would reform and lengthen, drawing more mass from Glass’ glittering shroud.

The Lord of Blood looked pale. His face was furious. Whips and beams and bolts of blood sprayed from him, but most were deflected by overlapping panes of translucent material. After another few failed attacks, the dragon turned, and dove back towards the army.

No! Tom thought. Don’t let it heal again!

But Glass was not an Instructor at the Academy because she was stupid. As the dragon dove, she flung herself after it. And as the dragon raised its massive, horned head, preparing itself to exsanguinate another thousand orcs to fuel its outrageous regeneration, she struck.

The glass sword fell on its arched neck from behind. As before, the sword began to compress, pulling in on itself, seeming to grow smaller, driving shards of glass into the beast’s hide, burrowing between its scales.

It screamed as innumerable shards sunk into the soft underside of its neck, but the sound was abortive. It was a reflexive action, one made by a beast that threatened his city and belonged to an evil man, but Tom couldn’t help but cringe anyway. The movement would have sent glass all up and down the interior of its throat.

The dragon, poised to swoop low over the orc army again, lost control of its flight. It crashed into the ground, ploughing a furrow through their ranks, sending orcs tumbling through the air before it like toys. Its sheer mass and momentum must have killed almost as many orcs in death as it did in life.

It gave a few, feeble screeches, and then suddenly collapsed in on itself. Red dust and disappearing motes of rusty red light were all that remained. It was dead.

Tom looked for Glass, and saw her dropping to the earth too. She looked so tiny, falling from the sky. Tom swore she looked relieved, as she fell. Pleased even. It made him glad.

She must have spent herself utterly to take down the Lord and his dragon. A control skill allowing her to puppet such an outrageous quantity of material must have been ruinously expensive. She had no mana left to keep herself in the air.

Tom had immediately sent Sus and Sol to try and intercept her when he saw her fall. There was no way they would make it. No chance at all.

She fell, and landed in among the orcs. She was buried in an instant. Tom sent a prayer to Goddess for her soul.

An instant later, orcs began to fall too. Not from the sky, but definitely to the ground. All around him, all in front of him, they slumped, keeling over.

It took Tom a second to understand. An orc just ahead of him toppled onto its front, a shard of glass a foot long lodged in its spine.

He looked up. The way was clear. In front of him, he could see his mother, Rosa, Val, Errol, and Cass, and more, immobilised somehow. The Smith stood, unharmed.

Glass had reopened the path. Tom intended to run it.