B2 Ch. 32 Enemy at the Gates.

Linus Level 65 Cosul

Not for the first time, Linus cursed his new class.  It was an inefficient mix of political leadership and limited marital abilities. To make matters worse, all of the martial abilities were limited to Buffing forces that the System classified as “Standing Armies”.

Flame’s Watch was extremely powerful for what it was, a guardsman class.  But without unlocking true martial classes, their utility would be limited. Especially in frontline warfare.  The newly minted soldiers were doing an admirable job holding up against the constant onslaught of the enemy.   Abilities like Call the Guard, and Riot Wall were working so far as a stopgap.  Call the Guard filled any breaks in the line holding the wall by summoning designated reserves directly to the needed spot of activation.  When a member of the Watch was summoned this way, they gained a slew of buffs for the next sixty breaths and a minor gab-close movement ability. Riot Wall was serving as a lesser version of any military unit’s shield push skill.  It was meant to be used against citizens and prioritized defense and displacement.  Unlike a military equivalent, it offered no multipliers to damage or forward movement…

Aside from some weapon and armor proficiencies bonuses… that was it.  That was what they had to work with as a function of their size. Despite this, the men and women rotating in to hold the line were some of the finest initial recruits Linus had ever seen.  He had risen through the ranks of the empire’s military structure until he had gained the highest nonpolitical placement… and he had never seen a more determined group of new soldiers.

They faced waves of enemies, sometimes three times their level, and none broke or wavered.  In fact, perhaps because of the lack of unit abilities, which often turned a group of soldiers into a singular much more powerful entity, Skill leveling and Experience gains had shown to be astronomical.  Sometimes powerful unit abilities became a crutch that the average soldier leaned on, ignoring the fundamentals, but the fundamentals were all they had.

All of this he understood, and yet his skin continued to itch as he watched the ongoing combat.

“Justice’s Blind Eyes!”  Linus cursed again under his breath as the most recent wave of enemies retreated reluctantly.   The thousand or so combatants had suffered incredible losses, as much as sixty to seventy percent, while the Alliance forces had only lost maybe one in every twenty men.

This pattern had repeated itself over and over for the last day. Each time the Strigoi Horde really began to press the forces on the wall and the call for reinforcement would have to go out, the enemy would call a retreat and move back to their lines. They crashed against their fortified position time after time, taking huge losses in the charge, yet they always pulled back, like dark waves slowly eroding sand from the shore.

When the retreat sounded, Consumers and Fleshbags who were still standing snatched any soldier they could and retreated with the rest of their forces.  Sometimes the man or woman in question was still alive, and their screams tore through moral like tissue paper.  It was humiliating.  Linus could literally feel the Bastions chomping at the bit to get in the fight… but they had to be kept in reserve.

As the loose braying mob of grey flesh excited bow range, healers were called in like always and a changing of the units was ordered by the commanders on the wall.

‘They are playing with us… Gods dammit.  An expensive game to be sure, but one that we most assuredly cannot win.’ Linus kicked the nearby stone stair in frustration.

“These tactics don't make any Justice damned sense!” He whispered harshly under his breath, schooling his expression as the replacement unit passed by, faces grim with determination and in some cases, resignation.

They most thought they were holding, driving back the enemy time after time… Linus hoped none of them released the truth.

“What troubles you Consul?” A voice asked quietly from over Linus’ shoulder.  He spun away from the battlements to find Erash, standing in all her regal beauty, leaning lightly on her staff. Linus knew even that was not what it seemed, and he wondered darkly for a moment how long she would be able to stand without swaying if she didn't have that crutch to lean on.

“Truthfully?”  He asked, looking for any hint of sarcasm or mockery in her features.

“Yes, we have moved through a full day with minimal losses or use of resources.  Should we not be more optimistic?”  She asked, arching one perfect eyebrow at him, as if she knew more than she let on, but wanted his input for some reason.  She seemed to be looking for something and the unspoken questions irritated him further.

He stepped forward aggressively, lowering his voice into a harsh whisper, “You know good and well what troubles me.  The same thing that has kept you from resting since the attacks started!”  He almost spat in frustration.

“This is a farce.  They are playing with us, and while I see that their numeric advantage is more than enough to defeat us eventually using this strategy, I cannot for the life of me understand why they do not try to sweep us away.  If even one of their leaders took the field, I am hard-pressed to see how we could hold against a meaningful show of force.

“Yet they wait! Tossing their weakest at us as if we are some sort of idle entertainment.”  He finished, deflating.  When he looked back up to meet the High Preastess’ eyes, he found something bright there.  It was sharp, and it was angry.  The eyes took on a glow and scanned the ranks on the battlements before returning to Linus-

No that wasn’t quite right, she was staring at a spot right above Linus’s head, as if she could see something there.

“Freeze the blood in that bastard's bones!  How have I missed this?!” She hissed.

“What?” Linus asked, suddenly at a loss.

“That Damned Igor.  He has covered the whole Tundra-Blasted field in a Malaise! One so subtle that it has escaped my detection. But how do I combat it without waking a reprisal…”  She trailed off, bringing one of her manicured nails to her mouth and chewing on it in furious thought.

“Malaise?  What are you talking about?”  Linus demanded, his sense sharpening to high alert as he looked back at the enemy line in suspicion.

“It is an extremely malicious and subtle area of effect.  It does nothing the first few hours, but after a day, all who spend time in its presence feel defeated, depressed, confused.  After a few days, suspicion and jealousy set in… Inevitably we would have started to attack each other, breaking our own defense without them having to do anything but train up their young…”  She huffed, her eyes shifting back and forth as she went through her mental options.

“I need some sort of mental purifying effect… but it has to be ongoing.  One that I don't have to refresh every few hours…”  She started to mutter to herself, turning to wander away.

“Wait, are you saying I am under the effects of some sort of magic?”  Linus almost shouted as she turned her back to him.

“We all are Cosul. Just give me a few hours.  I can counter this, but I need to do so in a way that does not draw out an immediate confrontation.  Ideally, I want them to think it is still working for days yet.  Every hour gained is a victory for us, do not forget that Linus.”  She said over her shoulder before moving away quickly towards the healing tent and her base of operations.

A few moments later,  Hiro arrived, coming down the rear stairs, and catching Linus’ gaze with a questioning look.

“Then men said you were shouting at the High Priestess… I imagine you would not do so without reason,”  he stated as he neared Linus’ position at the base of the stairs.

“We were speaking of the enemy tactics, and somehow through the discussion, she discovered some sort of large-scale mental magic at play.  She headed off to counter it… I may have overreacted, which is not typical of me, and perhaps evidence of her point. Gods I hate mental magic.”

Hiro nodded, his crystalline gaze seeming to miss nothing.

“The Honu have a saying, ‘A shark's hunger undoes his brother and protects us all.’  They use it to describe a creature of their oceans whose young devour each other until only the strongest remain.  It is in their nature to sacrifice the weak so that the strong may rise.  I think we are facing something similar here.  They see us as a leveling and… Meal opportunity.  They rightly believe us to be harmless to them on any scale that matters.

“The ones who escape back to their lines usually have fed, to some degree, on our men, and who knows what level of significance that has in their culture.  If not for our purifying capabilities, this tactic would have already destroyed us. But now,  it is working in our favor.  Each day they give us is a gift, we grow stronger, and our people gain the time they need to accomplish their quest.  None of this will be easy, but we would not have been thrust into this conflict if there was not a way through.

“ I too had lost hope the first time I met that Human, yet through him our people have obtained more than they could have ever dreamed….  There is hope friend, we just have to hold on.”  The elderly Samurai finished, something like kindness glittering in his hard green eyes.

…

Relevus level 22 Butcher

He’d had the dream again…

This time he had woken up outside the camp near the forest covered in blood…

Blood was nothing new for Relevus, but the portly Satyr was used to it happening in the back of his shop. He had especially loved when the farmers would deliver live animals, and he-

But that was all over now. The slimy Scalebellies had taken everything from him.  He had to leave behind almost everything except a few of his favorite knives, and now he was stuck in this frontier refugee camp, surrounded by idiots who pretended like the fools in charge were some sort of saviors.

He had gotten sick with many of the others while living in the squaller of the capital city, but he hadn’t gone begging for some handout like a weakling.   He had toughed it out, like he always had, and the strange black rash had slowly faded from his skin, leaving him feeling better than ever.

Then the dreams had started.

Dreams where he was wistfully taken back to his old shop.  There he would relive the memories of the best days.  Slaughter days, where he could end another living being with nothing but the strength of his hands and the edge of his knives.

He smiled as he thought of the dream again, before looking down and remembering he had blood all over his apron and hands. He wiped at some wetness from his mouth and created a red streak down his forearm.

‘That was new.’

He didn’t know exactly what was happening, and as long as he didn't get caught, he didn’t really care.  The dreams made him feel strong.  They gave him that feeling of control that he missed so much from the back of his shop.

He stumbled over to the river's edge in the dark and washed off the blood as best he could before heading back to the camp.  There were hardly any Watch around with the attacks happening on the other side of the valley.  The misstep with a foolishly early activation of the Sovereign Crystal was just another example of the ineptitude of these new leaders.  The food and shelter problems they claimed to have solved would have only taken the weak, leaving the strong majority secure.

They were going to get us all killed, just like the idiots in charge of the empire had tried to do…

“Relevus.” A voice whispered from the shadows of a tent as he entered the camp.

The Butcher’s head whipped around until he found a gaunt figure, wrapped in robes so that nothing but his elderly face showed. He had what once might have been dignified features, now lined and worn by the elements.  But his eyes, where sharp, glittering with intensity from the shadows.

“Who are you? How do you know me”  The Butcher's voice asked in outrage, barely covering over his rising panic.

‘Have I been discovered?  Will I have to end this old man?’ He thought hurridly, reaching for his knife below his dirty leather apron. For some reason, the motion sent a thrill through him, and he felt a strange but pleasurable sensation from the area of his body that had recovered from the rash.

“Worry not. I am not one to deny a man his simple pleasures”  The robed figure waved placatingly.

“I am here because I see greatness in you”-  He said, showing a row of strangely sharp teeth.

“You are not the only wolf that has been penned in with these… sheep. ”