Chapter 117: Battle

FieryKathy

“Quick rundown of the plan.” My sister signals us to huddle together. “Ruva will stay hidden in the forest so she doesn’t get caught up in all the action. The four of us will try to get closer to the obelisk so we get a better shot at it. Once we are close enough Sam and Nikki will start blasting the living shit out of it. In the meantime I will try to keep the enemy of our ranged elements while Hilda picks off people on the side. While all this is happening our Ami will provide air support when necessary and otherwise she’ll be the ultimate badass she is.” 

“Sounds good.” Sam nods. 

“Sam and I will also try to keep the enemy down when we can so you don’t get swarmed.” Nikki states. 

“That’d be much appreciated.” Lise smiles. 

“Are you ready, Ami?” Hilda asks. 

“Yeah, I can go when you are ready.” 

“We should get moving then.” She nods and the rest of the group backs away from me to leave me enough space to stretch my wings.

“Good luck, sis.” 

“Stay safe.” Sam gives me a last kiss before also backing away from me. 

“Same goes for you all.” I bring my sword close to my chest and a white light spreads across the entire party before I spread my wings. With one powerful beat of my wings I’m already above the treetops. It feels completely different when I’m in full control. Everything around me looks so clear to me now, compared to how it felt when I was under control of the red haze… the difference is night and day. 

With a couple more beats of my wings I gain some more altitude. I can now clearly see the full extent of the siege camp in front of the capital. What we saw from the edge of the forest was just a fraction of what there was in actuality. They had the entire capital encircled, although the bulk of the army did look like it was situated on the side where we were coming from. Logical as the teleportation obelisk was over there. From the sky above I can see how my party makes it’s way closer to the obelisk. With Hilda occasionally taking out a couple of people that stay a bit too close to them. For now they are closing in on the target, undetected. Speaking of which… I’ve not been spotted myself yet… 

A whooshing sound from the front of the siege camp pulls my attention. It quickly becomes clear that the sound is coming from the siege weapons of the theocracy that have started firing. Most of the weapons look like alternate versions of trebuchets and catapults. One of the projectiles they just fired hit the top of the dwarger walls, resulting in a fiery explosion going over the top into the defenders. Screams of agony and pain… A sound I just can not ignore. I quickly swoop down onto the wall and cast an area heal around me, healing the wounds and soothing the pain of those around me. One of the Dwarger defenders, the one closest to me as I landed, raises his crossbow at me, while crawling back against the stone wall. Fear in his eyes, the burns on his face were slowly fading. When he sees me looking at him he pulls the trigger on his crossbow, the bolt just harmlessly bounces off my shield. 

“Don’t be afraid, I’m here to help.” I crouch down next to one of the dead Dwarger a bit further away, he took the brunt of the explosion, and cast a quick resurrection spell on him. On this portion of the wall he looked to be the only one. When the pulse returns to his body and he starts breathing again I turn my attention back on the Dwarger who shot me. He’s still trembling but does not appear to be making any hostile actions towards me. 

“W-w-who are you?” He asks while he slowly gets up from his seated position against the wall. 

“Just a friend.” I smile. “Don’t worry, I will make this all end.” 

I launch myself back into the air just in time to see that the theocracy is preparing to launch yet another barrage. But I will not let it come to that. I concentrate on my blade, making it glow bright red before I point it at the first siege engine right in front of me. When I let loose my concentration a ray of fire quickly finds its way to my target, igniting it instantly and rendering it immediately unuseable. I do the same for the other siege engines I can see, and before any of them manage to throw their payload, none of them are operational anymore. 

This does reveal my presence to the besieging force, but that couldn’t be hidden for that much longer anyway.

A silence falls over the entire army before a couple of voices start to cry out. 

“It’s the witch of Parma!” 

“The heretic is here!” 

“Someone, get her!” 

The cries of thousands start getting hurled at me but somehow that doesn’t even make a dent in my confidence. 

“Silence!” I yell, the golden inlaid bracelet glows when my voice rings out, amplifying it so everyone can hear it loud and clear. The battlefield falls silent once more. “This city and its people are under my protection. Leave now and don’t come back. Spare yourself the retribution.”

An arrow zooms by. “And who are you to tell us to leave? You are merely one against thousands.” The person who calls out to me is a Langor ranger, wearing a set of studded leather armour. From the lack of a uniform I assume this is a player, together with the group of people standing around him. 

“You just look like a player to me. Just because you’ve got some fancy items doesn’t mean you can’t get beaten!” The Drakone girl next to him yells at me as well. 

The group of soldiers around them looks incredibly scared and take their distance away from the group. They clearly are quite a bit more intimidated by my presence. 

“Why are you helping them? They are clearly just out for blood.” I ask the party. 

“It’s just a quest isn’t it? Don’t come at us with your fucking ‘holier than thou attitude’.” 

I sigh. -Of course, I suppose I can’t even blame them, as for them this is just a game…- “So you will not leave?” 

“Nah, we are here to stay and fight this battle. Maybe do some pillaging as well once we conquer the city.” The Langor player smirks at me.

“...So be it…” I then raise my sword to heavens above. This time a brighter white light starts forming around the blade. In the second this takes, the Drakone girl tries to cast a spell at me while the Langor ranger fires a couple more arrows, all but the last of the arrows misses, and the last one just bounces off my breastplate. 

The Langor ranger knocks one last arrow before the entire area of the player party gets desintagrated by a pillar of divine light that crashes down on their position. When the light subsides, nothing is left but a patch of scorched earth.  

“Please! Spare us!” The soldiers who backed off look even more terrified than before thanks to my display of power, they get to their knees and start channeling a teleportation spell. Two seconds later, they are gone. This sends a wave through the rest of the army as more and more soldiers start to teleport away. But in the end the vast majority of the enemy army still remains. 

“Those deserters will be dealt with later!” One of the priests calls out. By his fancy purple robes he’s probably one of the more higher ranking priests in the army. “Kill her!” 

“You have made your choice.” Another burst of light strikes down from the heavens, this time covering an even wider area. At least twenty meters around where the priest stood has been completely cleared out. Yet his command did ring out and all kinds of spells and projectiles started flying in my direction. I use my shield to block the more dangerous looking spells that fly towards me. And every time I get hit I return the favor with yet another pillar of light. This goes on for a minute or so before the teleportation obelisk in the distance is hit by an enormous fireball. I recognize it immediately as Nikki’s handiwork. It is soon followed up by a light blue blast of light, striking it in dead-center. Presumably the work of my girlfriend. 

The explosion pulls the attention of quite a sizable amount of the army. 

“Protect the obelisk!” Multiple officers call out to their units. Masses of soldiers soon begin to flow in the direction of my party. I strike the center force of the enemy with another pillar of light but that doesn’t stop the army from closing the distance.

However, when the first army units get threateningly close to Nikki and Sam, a blast of sounds completely flattens the first wave of soldiers. They all get blown to the ground, grasping for their ears. At the source of the sound is my sister, her sword still on her shield after she had given it a good whack. 

“Attention on me dickheads!” She calls out. I’m surprised I can even hear that to where I’m flying, but she’s probably enhancing her voice as well to draw the enemy’s aggression to her. 

Nikki and Sam launch another combo attack on the obelisk as the second wave of enemies is getting closer, yet a lot slower since they have to run around their injured, and quite probably deafened, allies. 

While being confused and rattled by my sister they don’t even notice the rogue slipping through their ranks, who’s taking out soldiers at an extremely fast pace with precise and swift cuts, by the time others notice, Hilda is already out of their sight. 

In the meantime I keep blasting pillars of light into the army, severely diminishing the number of soldiers on the battlefield.  The couple of soldiers that can actually reach my sister swiftly get cut down by her blade. 

Most of the of player parties that are left after my barrage of light and occasionally Hilda’s en my sister’s blade, have finally decided to find their luck elsewhere and teleport out. Everything is going to plan. The continuous stream spells start to take their effect on the obelisk as big cracks start to form.

One last combination of attacks from Nikki and Sam completely shatters the top of the obelisk. The crashing down of the debris silences the battlefield once more. 

But this silence is incredibly short-lived as an unholy scream makes even me cover my ears. A column of darkness shoots up from the broken obelisk, around which shadows start twirl out of the broken pillar. They all gather up twenty meters above the ground into a huge ball of pitch black. 

I fly closer to my party as the enemy army is mostly completely perplexed at what is happening in front of their eyes. 

“What the fuck!?” My sister calls out. “Ami, what the hell is that?” 

“I’m not sure.” A shiver runs down my spine as I look into it. 

The dark ball begins to take a shape… a human shape, but completely distorted and disfigured. 

“Re…venge…  Dea…th…” The huge ghostly figure speaks, yet it sounds like hundreds of people saying those words at exactly the same time. Before I can react the figure swoops its left arm at me which sends me flying into the city wall. 

The outer layer of the wall cracks and I fall down to the floor, all the air is knocked out of me… blood seeps down the side of my face. My wing is broken… I’m hurt. 

The figure continues in the distance, sweeping in front of it with it’s other arm, sending hundreds of soldiers flying… “Pain… Suff… ering…” it starts moving towards the city, sowing death and destruction in its wake.

-I need to stop that thing before it reaches the walls…- 

FieryKathy