Chapter 9: Horde

After a 5-minute run we catch up to Hilda who’s currently yelling at the gatekeep

“What do you mean, the fucking gate is stuck?!”

“I’m sorry ma’am! Everything is rusted shut, these gates haven’t had to close in years.”

“Don’t you twats do fucking maintenance for fuck’s sake!”

“B-b-budget cuts…”

“Oh my fuck… I can’t believe this...”

“Goddess, this can’t be good.” Élise let’s out, already drawing her sword and shield.

“Wait just a second… Amicia?” Hilda quickly turns her gaze towards me.

“Uhm...yes?”

“Could you try to fix the gate?”

“Well... I’m not really a mechanic…”

“I meant with your skill you dummy.”

“Oh right!” I totally forgot that I even could do something like this.

I aim my healing spell at the gate and start casting. I’m at it for at least 30 seconds before I see a single speck of rust disappear. I stumble backwards from exhaustion.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do this.”

“Don’t worry, you are pretty low level so I didn’t really expect it to work but it was worth the shot…” She pats my head and hands me a mana potion. “I guess we’ll have to Sparta the F out of this.”

“Got it.” Élise starts rounding up the shieldsmen and the spearmen of the royal guard.  

“Uhm?” I insert, nervously twisting the cap of the mana potion.

“Battle of Thermopylae. Spartans fought the Persians in a bottleneck, mostly negating the numerical advantage the Persians had. Why do you know so many things about weapons but not about history? Didn’t you have history in high school, Amicia?”

“Hey, not everyone is interested in both... and I kinda fell asleep during history classes…”

Hilda sighs and ruffles my hair. “What are we supposed to do with you.”

Nikki walks up to me and whispers in my ear. “Hilda has a master’s degree in history.”

“Ooh, I see.”

“Anyway, we should probably get ready, the goblins could be here any second now. Ember you go with Nikki on top of the wall, fire as much as you can into the mass of enemies, but do watch out for their archers.”

“Okidok-iiiiiii!” Ember quickly gets scooped up by Nikki who teleports to the top of the wall.

“Darn vampires, I’ll never get used to that. Uhm, anyway, Amicia, it’s your job to heal the tank line as best as you can, these are pretty experienced soldiers so they can soak up a lot of damage. Just make sure they don’t drop. I’ll stay down here with you to take out anyone that manages to sneak through the line, okay?”

I nod.

“Good girl. We just need to hold out until the guild gets here, might take more than half an hour though…”  

At that moment I hear my sister call out “Hilda! They are here!”

“Looks like we are up.”

It stays quiet for a couple more moments before I start hearing the stampede of the goblin horde. Silent at first, but becoming louder and louder as more goblins close the distance. The flicking of the bowstrings from our archers, almost completely in sync with each other. The occasional bang of Ember’s blunderbuss and the fiery explosions of Nikki’s AOE blasts.

Not long after that the first goblins clash with the shield wall at the gate. Their cries high and piercing as the spearman poke them full of holes.

Even though the goblins lack any martial skills they occasionally get a hit in on our frontline tanks. I do my best casting my healing spells, both my channelcast and my heal over time. The line bulges in a bit due to the sheer mass of the goblin assault, luckily the line does look like it’s holding out.

However…

“Hilda, I need a second line behind us now!” My sister calls out.

Hilda immediately goes off to get some random militiamen in the neighbourhood.

“W-what’s happening!?”

Hilda doesn’t say anything and just quickly points at the mass in front of the gate.

The goblins are starting to climb on top of their comrades to use them as a sort of bridge to get over our shieldwall. Some of them are getting picked off by our ranged fighters on the wall but it looks like some are still getting through.

“Oh no you don't!!” Élise yells out as she overhand cleaves a goblin in twain who tried to jump in behind her. Quickly bringing her sword down again for a horizontal swing, lobbing off the heads of several goblins in front of her too. One of their heads comically bouncing of her shield, into the face of another gobbo. 

I also try to do my part to stop the overflow, casting my big blue ball of death in between my healing casts. Sadly enough for the goblins they wear pretty flammable clothing, setting some of the allight immediately and fall in between their comrades, starting yet another wildfire besides those that Nikki has started with her fireballs.

Hilda quickly comes back with what looks like 10 citizens she just handed some spears too.

“Here Amicia, have another mana potion, I’ll give you five more to be sure.”

“Thanks, sorry that I’m not more useful.”

Hilda is visibly taken aback a little by my comment. “You kiddin’ me kiddo? You’re doing great. Without you our shieldwall would’ve gone down already. This empire rarely has any magic casters, except for some high nobility.” Right when she ended her sentence she sent a throwing knife flying towards one of the militiamen, barely missing his head and plunging itself into a goblin that was jumping at his throat. “Heads up, mate.”

“T-t-thanks ma’am.” The soldier quickly goes back into full alert.

“Just keep doing what you are doing and we’ll be fine, okay?” she pats my shoulder.

“Okay. Thanks Hilda.” I smile.

The battle goes on for ten more minutes without really any notable events. Goblins that run over our first defense are either getting struck down by the second line of militiamen or get served a throwing knife by Hilda. I’m keeping up with the healing but I did just use up my last mana potion. Hopefully this battle won’t last much longer...

Suddenly a pair of goblins run up to her, apparently having managed to sneak past a couple of militiamen. She grabs her cane from the belt on her hip and unsheathes a sword from it as one of the goblins lunges for her. She quickly raises her cane to block the incoming attack while embedding the long thin blade in the chest of the goblin’s compatriot, swiftly bashing in the head of the remaining goblin with a nasty crunch.

Hilda takes out a red cloth and wipes the blood off her sword and cane combo when she sees me staring at her in awe.

“Red hides blood better, y’see,” she grins.

Wow, she almost looks like a completely different person when she’s in combat mode.

I keep looking at Hilda for a bit as she is cleaning off the last bit of blood when I almost get run over by a man in heavy armour, and another, and another.

“Wait, aren’t those…?”

“Hilda! We have an issue!” Élise comes running to us too, followed by Nikki and Ember. “Most of the goblins are dead, but-”

An extremely loud crack fills the air as the gatehouse is shattered leaving a huge creature standing there.

“Well, that!”

“What?! This wasn’t in the scout reports!”

“I don’t know what happened either, we looked up one second and it was just there.”

“What in Goddess’ name is happening, first the goblin horde now, thi- Watch out!”  

We all jump out of the way before a huge boulder hits the spot where we were just standing. “I don’t think we can handle this…” Élise says, out of breath from all the fighting. “Not with this party. No offense of course, but you two basically just started yesterday.”

“No offence taken.” Ember replies but clearly a bit upset.

“So, should we run for it?” I add.

Hilda sighs and wipes away some tears. “...ye’, let’s start evacuating.”

“Giving up so soon?” A voice rings out from behind us, followed by a giant barrage of crystal shards towards the huge creep.

“Crystal, thank Goddess!” Hilda calls out.

I look back as I see a woman standing there, together with a small army of well-equipped adventurers. Her entire body looks like it consists of green leaves, but rather than soft and flowing, they look hard and crystalline. “Ooooh, that’s why she’s called Crystal....” I say, a bit louder than I intended

“Yes indeed little miss.” She laughs and turns herself towards Hilda  “Are these the rookies you mentioned, Hilda?” She gestures towards me and Ember.

“Yes, yes they are.” Hilda says in a proud tone.

She comes closer to the both of us and gives us a soft pat on our heads “You two did a great job, but let us veterans take care of this now, okay? You three can also rest a bit, you all look like hell.” Crystal smiles and quickly moves back towards the adventurers as we move back to a safer distance.

After a short speech the entire group rushes towards the incoming threat, covering almost the entirety of the creature in a rainbow spectacle of explosions, and multiple forms of projectiles.

“Wow, that’s amazing.” my mouth almost falls open when I look upon the spectacle.

“That’s the guild for ya.” Hilda replies, coming to sit next to me watching the battle unfold.

“So Crystal is the guild leader?”

“Pretty much. She didn’t really want to do it at first but all of us voted for her nonetheless, she’s a natural leader.”

“You aren’t that bad either, Hilda; you just shoved her forward because you really didn’t want to.” Élise and Nikki sit down next to us as well.

“I really don’t like all the politics involved with it, and big groups of people make me shiver.” She visibly cringes at the thought. 

It doesn’t take long before the lumbering creature goes down to the enormous firepower of the alpha testers, its corpse completely blocking the western entrance.

“How are they going to remove it?” I ask, looking at the devastation.

“Have you ever seen how they get rid of dead whales that have been beached?” Nikki explains.

“Oh, that’s nasty.”

“Indeed it is, and it takes quite long too. On top of that, creatures like that don’t really have anything useful for the city, except for the loot drops. The bones do generally fetch quite a price though - they’re basically ivory.”

“Wow.” I never really thought of all the logistics that go into fights like this. I’m pretty happy I don’t have to clean it up.

“Hey girls, we should probably go collect our loot, well, from the goblins that didn’t get smooshed by the giant at least.” Hilda calls out.

“Ye, you two really need some better gear.” Élise takes me by the shoulder.

“That’s true, I definitely want something that shows of my figure better.”

Élise laughs. “Ugh, you’re such a girl.”

“Indeed I am!”