Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 58 Safeharbor’s Walls

“Who’s that?” Edward heard one of Izen’s ducal guards question.

“State your name!” Another called out.

A very indistinct voice purred: “Phantom.” And then laughed in a way much like the crazy elf girl at the end of their right flank.

Edward chuckled at the name. “I’m surprised you came.” He said and dropped to his knees. “Switch with me?”

“Of course, our mutual friend told me to make sure you survived. She would never say it but I could tell that she really wanted to be here herself.” Phantom replied with a laugh that seemed to tell everyone within earshot that he was definitely not taking any of the chaos seriously. Phantom drug Edward to his feet and all but shoved him into the ducal guard that arrived to question his identity.

“Thanks.” Edward told Phantom before he turned to the guard. “Oh shut up Tod. If someone arrives to help when you need it, don’t be an ass.” That shut the guard up in an instant. The man could do nothing but nod to Edward and help him back from the broken battleline.

Phantom danced and spun through the skeletons for minute after minute without slowing. Every swing was perfect and graceful as it bisected undead after undead. He had been at it for ten minutes before signs of fatigue started to show. He gradually started slowing down but it was noticeable to Edward, who had been watching him like a hawk, almost immediately.

Edward was grateful to Lenny for giving him a break but he knew that the boy was not up to the challenge of filling in his position. Lenny was taking out eight skeletons to Edward’s ten which was enough to fill the gap but it put undue stress on the rest of the frontline. Edward forced himself to his feet and put his helmet back on, the illusion that his armor produced to make him look like he was wearing a toga had long ago been bashed away. Edward had just taken his first step towards Lenny and was about to call out to the rogue-warrior hybrid that it was time to switch places when everything suddenly changed.

Every animated skeleton suddenly stopped moving. Then, as one, they all turned around to leave. Safeharbor seemed to hold its breath as everyone wondered what was happening. Right when the undead had reached around the fifty foot mark from the city wall, people started to cheer. Edward let out a sigh and then the whole world shook.

—

Alexander’s eyes were closed as he was meditating. Every drop of mana counted and he needed enough to be able to teleport the duke out of the city. Izen had specifically told him not to do so but Alexander had his own priorities. Sera and Izen had helped him a lot during their time working together and he felt like he owed it to Sera to save her husband. There were no doubts in his mind that Izen would be absolutely livid but if the duke was still alive then he could lead a punitive force to crush the undead and retake the city in the future.

Alexander felt a jolt of lightning go through him. There wasn’t actually any electricity because it was from the illusion that he had built into a certain magical prototype. Alexander gulped hard. He was officially in a horrible position. Not only had his plan of handling the undead situation failed miserably but now he wouldn’t even be able to fulfill his promise to Isaac and Lenna. When the beacon hit him with the illusory jolt it also gave him its exact coordinates to facilitate his teleportation. There were two major problems that kept him from teleporting directly to the duo. The first was that he needed to stay in Safeharbor so he could bail Izen out at the last second and teleport him out of the city. The second was that Alexander didn’t actually have enough mana to teleport the entire way to Isaac and Lenna. He could get close, maybe a mile or so away if he teleported immediately, but that wouldn’t help the duo as quickly as any of them would’ve liked. Even then, what good was a wizard without mana.

Alexander slammed his eyes closed again and tried to meditate through the tingling from the magical beacon.

Right when Alexander was about to get up to find a mana potion, because he couldn’t meditate through the beacon’s constant tingling, He heard cheering from the top of the wall. He jumped up and started running towards the nearest set of stairs that would lead him up to Izen. He had just taken his first step on the set of stairs when the ground under him started to shake. The entirety of Primatia seemed to tremble and groan while rocks and stone dust shook loose from the ceiling above them. Alexander looked up just in time to see a massive slab of stone at least twenty feet across and ten feet wide peel off of the cavern ceiling. “Oh, oh no.” Was all he could say as he watched in horror. It looked like it was right above the Adventurers’ Guild. The very building that half of the people from the slums were currently packed into for safety.

Alexander didn’t hesitate and started casting two spells back to back: “Heed my command magic and space, take me to this imagined place.” Was immediately followed up with: “DEFLECT!” He yelled the word in the ancient language of magic and threw his hands up into the air above him as he appeared on the roof of the Adventurers’ Guild. He poured all of his remaining mana into the low level spell and a shield the size of a dining table formed above him with a severe slope off the side of the building towards the street below. Thankfully there shouldn’t have been anyone still out in the street and, with the rumbling that had just stopped, everyone would be too busy recovering their footing to try and run in fear.

The slab of stone hit the shield so hard that the wall of reality dropped a foot and half from the impact force alone. The shield slammed into Alexander’s hands and almost pushed him over. The stone broke into a dozen pieces as it exploded from the impact. Most of the stone went in the direction Alexander had intended but some of it still wound up on the roof of the building. The stone that went in the intended direction ended up smashing into the crown of the building. The crown hadn’t come out of the exchange unscathed. Some of the low wall had broken and cracked which only added to the falling debris.

Alexander heaved a huge sigh in relief as dizziness overtook him and he dropped onto his butt. His shield faded and rained stone dust and pebbles down on his head but that was fine. He was alive and the building was still mostly intact. He hadn’t even thought about how much damage a ground tremor could do until the sound of a collapsing building pulled him from his relief. Alexander crawled over to the edge and looked out over the city. One of the old buildings in the slums hadn’t been able to handle the shaking and was now a pile of rubble. He could only hope that the people that lived there were in the Adventurers’ Guild and not their home. Alexander turned and leaned against the short wall. “That… was way too close.” He said to himself.

The court wizard jumped as a realization hit him. He spun around to get a look towards the skeletal horde and the city walls. What he saw brought a sense of relief to him that he couldn’t put into words. The relief hit him so hard that, along with his general exhaustion and mana deprivation, caused the young man to pass out. They found Alexander there later, with his head on top of the wall, his eyes closed, breathing heavily as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and covered in red stone dust like a statue that hadn’t been cleaned in dozens of years.

—

Izen tried to maintain order as Edward tried to take stock of the situation. As soon as the tremors had stopped both men had jumped into action. Edward immediately noticed that Phantom was gone. The boy had made his exit while the world was shaking like a wet dog. Edward didn’t blame him. No, if anything, Edward was amazed at the boy’s ability to adapt and make the right decision in an entirely unknown situation. After noticing that Phantom was gone the next thing that Edward noticed was that the skeletons had stopped their retreat. Most of them were collapsed on the ground but they were all rising to their feet. They seemed to meander aimlessly for a few long seconds before one of them locked its lifeless eyes with one of the guard’s. It turned its body to face him and then started running at him with reckless abandon.

Soon the sounds from that one brought the attention of the others and the enemy were moving towards them again. There was something odd about them now however. Edward could tell immediately that they were acting entirely on instinct and were no longer being ordered around. He knew this because they weren’t trying to work together to get to them any more. All of them simply ran towards their intended targets. Most didn’t even make it up the mounds of their comrades. They had even stopped throwing their weapons. It was officially just a mindless horde. Edward wasn’t happy that the undead were back on the offensive but the relief that he felt from them losing cohesion almost made him relax.

Edward turned to his brother-in-law and nodded. “Their commander is dead! It’s time to clean up! Don’t slack off now! Warriors of Safeharbor! We have them on the back foot! Crush them!” He called out at the top of his lungs. There were cheers all across the wall but they were noticeably filled with more resolve than excitement, that had been used up when they thought that the undead were retreating. In their defense, they had been.

“Reorganize! Maintain previous formations!” Izen ordered and gave Edward a nod. “Let’s make sure this mess is cleaned up before our wayward heroes return.” He said to his close aides. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

“Oh?” Edward questioned. “And what is that? They keep saving us.”

“That no matter what comes, Safeharbor’s walls are unassailable.” Izen replied proudly.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Edward laughed. “But I think they were assailed.”

“You know what I meant.” Izen shot back.

Edward laughed harder. “You heard him! Kick these corpses off of our walls!” He punctuated it by picking up half of a skeleton and launching it away from the walls towards the still animated corpses. Some of the guardsmen had seen the spectacle and many more started joining him. Despite the grim circumstances and the exhaustion pervading the entirety of the frontline, there was laughing and cheering as more and more corpses were thrown at their still animated brethren. Safeharbor had survived another local apocalypse. For many it was their second one but for a select few it was just another one to add to the list. All of the men on the wall had been in the battle against Jallen V’Nova’s men. Some of them had been guarding the caravan that had been attacked by the mushroom infested Ori-Masa and some of them had seen even more cataclysmic events in the past and taken part in halting them. The world they lived in was a brutal one, their city was even worse, but it was theirs.