Hlaeth Chapter 48 – On the Advance against the Yellow

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Healing magic was the anvil upon which the sword of battle was hammered. Without it backing them, the amount of fighting they could do would have been severely curtailed, even with their increased ability to take hits.

Constant fighting wore them down, even if they had more to wear down, after all.

The existence of Soak, and the fact it really was Warrior’s Magic, allowing them to survive attacks which should have scarred and maimed and broken them without injury, was such an eye-opener. Luck became skill, proper use of Soak to take on catastrophe, while more easily-Healed Health took most of the punishment, meant they had to be Healed from Reserve more often, but they could also fight much longer and harder.

Their opponent dead, he and Hano spun in opposite directions, surveying those fighting closest to them.

A pulse of will, and Kord indicated he was going to help Pound and Shirrazor with a three-legged, one-and-three armed/tentacled thing that might have been an ogre before it became part mushroom and part cooling lava occasionally vomiting fire.

Shirrazor was neither tall nor brawny, but she was very quick, and had adapted her entire fighting style to making sure those who fought in tandem with her butchered things ever more quickly. That was almost inevitably Pounder, whose over-sized Rakeblade found the openings she gave him with instant speed, meaning that the two fought together incredibly well.

A different style of combat, the Fire style of twin weapons and Opportunities opened and exploited for the powerful blows of the Ocean.

Hano ran the other way, where Glist, Shomo, Erno, and Hleetha were taking on something big that might have been a scorpion, except the tail was now spraying blasts of ice, and the pincers looked like mechanical scissors as it flowed back and forth on gelatinous ooze instead of legs.

Warlord awareness had the teams behind them shifting up to cover the opening and see to their own combats.

There was a flash of light ahead of them, the Golden hue from above impossible to mistake. A shout answered it, and the aged dwarf pushing a Disk some hundred yards back hustled forward, while the Children on all sides of him made sure the Brazier he was shoving along was untouched as he drove towards the site of another unseen Portal nobody had better cross through.

Speaking of which, it was almost time…

Shirrazor’s cutting Wingblades hacked through one of the once-ogre’s thick knee joints, and it lurched to the side. Pounder saw Kord coming and his Rakeblade Okho chopped down into a flailing tentacle more stone than fungus, getting it out of the way just as Kord came in with Yarhne in an up-swing through the gut and under the remnants of what once was a rib-cage, delivering a healthy load of vivus right to some vitals.

Without a pause, he let go his heavyfoot, and Pounder crashed into his side, delivering him out of the way of a monstrous arm nearly as long as the thing was tall. The raging creature promptly vomited a stream of fire upon the interfering urukhar, who took it on his Shield without batting an eye… and then Shirrazor ran up its back and ripped her Wingblades through four of its five eyes.

Nearby, the oldest sister of the Blackaxes, golden-haired Nyavl, released a precise arrow as Shirrazor heaved back on the decaying head, exposing the fifth eye just in time for her arrow to take it out.

Blinded, the thing could only flail madly and not defend itself effectively. Pounder took the hits on his Shield with ringing impacts, while Kord busied himself first hacking off the wounded leg entirely to unbalance the thing and force it to use the oversized arm to stay on its feet, then taking off the equivalent of two tentacles at the ‘shoulder’ with embedded bone/stone razors in two great chopping attacks while they were trying to flail at Shirrazor still climbing around on the thing’s back.

Pounder struck over him as he ducked away, slicing off the third tentacle, and then was smashed up and away as that monstrous limb pounded against his Shield, launching him into the air despite his heavyfoot with a clang of stone knuckles on metal and a grunt from the urukhar.

It also spun the creature around, setting him up perfectly as Kord leapt up into the air, Yahrne raised over his head, and brought it down in the Rock-Splitting Strike.

He wasn’t good enough with the blow. The mighty strike with all his weight and power behind it still wasn’t enough to cut all the way through flesh that was equal parts stone and mushroom, but he still hewed through the ‘bone’ and joint there, effectively dislocating it and greatly weakening it.

Shirrazor ran up its backside again, the former pleasure worker planting both of her Dancers into the wound, and then flipped down, around, up, and over it like it was an acrobat’s swing, fire flaring hot and bright and cutting. She sheared off the rest of the meat and sent its arm tumbling to the ground as she fell down right on Kord, who took the landing on his pauldrons, instantly charging forward in response as the creature lurched away, the halvyri standing and balancing on his shoulders with a wild smile.

Yahrne bit into a thick leg with three segments to it, while Shirrazor’s Dancers drove into its backside and joined his earlier axe strike in setting things to vivus ablaze inside it.

Pounder’s charge hit it high, bending it back over its crippled leg and Kord’s back, Okho coming down to split the umbrella-like covering on its decaying skull and rip all the way down into its chest with Cuts the Waterfall.

The creature staggered, and then vivus gouted out the massive wound, two mouths opened in pained bellows that sounded far, far too much like relief for anyone to tolerate. The once-ogre crashed to the ground as Shirrazor landed past it, and the big urukhar in full armor rolled free and basically came up standing right next to her, watching her back.

A telepathic tone rippled across their awareness, everyone on the field hearing it.

Five minutes to a Portal swap.

Kord left Pounder and Shirrazor to set all the parts of the once-ogre alight as he hustled to make sure the old dwarf pushing the brazier wasn’t alone, noting that the scorpion-thing was now missing its tail and Hano had wedged Solneshko into the joint of one of its scissor-arms, locking it in place and levering it down to the ground, the struggles of the Yellow creature helping tear the claw off as it tugged and finally ripped free, the scissors dropping heavily to the ground as they started to Burn.

Undeterred by the fact the Portal might be moving, the elder dwarf hustled to the position his eyes were locked on, and brought the Vivic Eternal Flame into position there. Dozens of such things were spread over the width of the battlefield, mandatory to keep their lines of retreat clean, and their lines of advance open.

Vivus poofed out, painting the flat round surface of the unseen Aperture in front of the old dwarf as he came to an instant halt. Kord paced up next to him, also eyeing the opening with great suspicion.

The things re-made and enhanced the creatures of the Yellow out of anything that might go through them. What looked like a once-ogre could once have been a mouse, he’d been told, mutated by going through multiple Portals.

The thought was horrifying. There were a LOT of mice and bugs in the world...

A flash of golden fire zipped down, impacted Pounder behind, and the urukhar chopping up the carcass of his kill to Burn faster grunted as his skin went red and Fire burst within him, coming painfully out his nose and making his eyeballs steam… and burning away probably cracked ribs and some internal damage as they did.

Master Aelryinth, watching everyone from on high, especially those in the front lines doing the most work.

The advancing stopped, fights wrapping up, support fire concentrating to speed up resolution of those still battling. Kord knelt next to the old dwarf, his gray beard growing ever whiter, face solemn and grim as they both waited for the Portal shift.

Nyavl came up behind him, another arrow from her One More Arrow quiver nocked and ready, although not drawn. Windfire curled around the shaft, allowing it to ignore winds and stay aloft longer, hitting with far more punch than any arrow had a right to. The glowing string of her Windbow Zakat shimmered as Yellow as her hair as she looked for targets nearby, and found only combats being wrapped up by other teams firing in support of their fellows.

The second tone indicated a minute to go. He saw two distant surges of windfire shots and magic from Reserves going off, whatever Yellow things were closing in on the area of white there dying in one and two salvos, respectively.

“Hst!” his adopted sister snapped, lifting Zakat abruptly, drawing, and releasing.

He didn’t see what she was shooting at until the arrow hit, vivus and golden fires spraying over it and limning the other-wise invisible thing, complete with five legs and three wings that didn’t match and an eagle’s beak on a giant fly’s head, only sixty yards away. It wasn’t moving very fast, clearly meant to be a flyer, but unable to do so with the moving Interdictions and Stillflights expanding out from them, which magic had saved their lives more than once.

Before the streams of vivus faded away from the arrow’s arcing flight path, six more arrows and bolts from waiting archers punched into it with devastatingly accurate fire, driving in deep and sending the creature sprawling. The next salvo dropped it entirely and set it alight, Burning slowly and mistily forty yards from them.

Nobody around was moving.

The Note that sounded this time was audible, and it rippled through the field of magic, all of the Children able to hear and feel it this time. There was a lurch within the echo, of the world in motion and shifting without spinning, something tearing at reality and moving around, doors opening and closing that should not have existed.

The Aperture right in front of them collapsed and was gone, leaving only some white ground and mist in front of them.

From a dot in the air, golden Shards arced out and down… an even half-dozen of them, spread across a front nearly a mile wide. They also reached back behind them, right up to the edge of the leading Interdiction zone of the Pyramid, where the Apertures could not form, and two more well out in front of them.

The elder pushing his Disk grunted, unsurprised. When the things shifted, they shifted. He fixed dark eyes on the new Aperture another hundred yards ahead of them and to the west, an uncleared zone that was definitely going to attract more of the Yellow creatures that were still arriving from every direction.

“Nice and easy, elder,” Kord said, limbering up his arm. “I see sand moving there, we’ve got a burrower.”

“Iv not one thing, it bin another!” the elder sniffed fatalistically. His own axe hung on his chest, but if anything reached a brazier-pusher, they were doing something wrong.

Kord looked back and jerked his head, pulling up the team behind him; Lendyr’s squad of one archer, two spears, one axe. “Burrower!” he called out as they came up.

“Always the fun ones,” Lendyr nodded, the compact, athletic halvyr spinning his Spear around as Kord unlimbered his Shield for this fight. Ung, the dhatun axer, nodded at the senior Borderguard, his own Axe gleaming White and ready. He split left, Kransk the urukhar and other Spear-user going right, while Kord stepped up to the middle.

One more day fighting the Yellow, growing stronger and facing things he once would have run from without the slightest hesitation…

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