NOVEL NEXT Chapter 57: To Arms!
5/6 Dawn
Auffrey wasn't the only one worried about the upcoming battle. Even if she was ostensibly the commander, I was the one in charge. We woke up a few hours before dawn, and I summoned Drusilla while I got dressed. We ate cold rations, not wanting to give away our position with fires. Once everything was lined up, I did my new morning ritual to settle my nerves. Tony again, he just seemed to do well with this sort of thing.
WTB mats
Give Kitta Firewind, enchanter of the Tower of Azora, ten magic items which she can disenchant for raw materials.
Reward: Gain the market value in gold for all items provided, and a mission ticket.
At first glance I thought this would be difficult. But then I had a thought. "Tessa," I asked my amulet. "Is your armor enchanted?"
"I think so? It's standard issue, but apprentice enchanters put minor improvements into our gear for practice. Absorbing a bit of force, improved alertness. That kind of thing." Excellent. I'd kept all of the armor off of the two other guards, on account of being a bit of a pack rat, but I wasn't attached to it. If 10 pieces of armor across the two sets were enchanted, Tony could hand them all over to Kitta. Technically the mission didn't say anything but that they needed to be given to her and disenchantable. If she found him having the armor questionable, he could teleport out. It should probably work.
"Thanks." I switched channels. "Lividia, Abby, can either of you two identify magic?" Lividia's voice crackled back to me "Of course. Who can't?" Innocent insensitivity aside, good.
"I'll send two sets of armor to Abby. You send anything that is enchanted to Tony. Do you understand how to do that?"
"Of course, my king. It'll be as easy as catching a rabbit."
Hopefully that was handled. Now then. Time to get to more serious business.
••••••••••
"Fear not, my friends. My commander is here to assist us in our battle today. Though the full force of our organization is needed elsewhere, today we go into battle alongside Sir Erich Bismark of Silverpine. He is a powerful priest, and comes alongside his companions Drusilla the warlock and the mage Mezzo." Auffrey was doing an alright job of rallying the 8 warriors she'd brought together. They were lightly armored in chainmail and leather paired with maces and shields, and their gear was uniform. I suspect Auffrey had a set commissioned for each of them.
I'd gone ahead and given Mezzo an amulet. Currently he looked like a particularly short goblin with slightly bad posture. I hadn't actually turned him into a goblin mind you, but he looked just like one and was under strict orders to pretend to be a goblin while traveling with me, backed by a leather shock collar with a purple stone. For the carrot, he was getting a mild sense of Euphoria whenever he assisted me with something. The selfish little hedonist needed to learn that helping me was helping himself. I wasn't sure how much I could transform him without interfering with my magic conduit, so for now I was happy to avoid the nervous looks Drusilla got. I could experiment tomorrow. Or the day after.
Drusilla surprised me, and basically everyone present, by pulling out an old spell that had fallen out of favor. After she had summoned Noktog, she proceeded to do another conjuring, summoning three beagle sized scorpions. She leaned against a tree afterwards, pawing at the waterskin on her belt. I remember her telling me that she had been a conjurer before she'd become a warlock, but not a very good one. Apparently this one spell had wiped out her entire pool of mana. No wonder she had switched over to fel magic. From what she had told me, the skorpids were useful mostly as scouts and distractions. She must be taking today very seriously if she was digging this deep.
I looked over our team. Twelve humans, two demons, and three skorpids. I was hopeful. This was my first real, planned battle but it would not be my last. Well, not unless it went supremely poorly and the company decided to make me a baker in my next life. If things started to go south, I fully intended to retreat. These were my people now, and a no name mercenary band could afford a rebranding or two.
The glass rod released a loud chime when the hour arrived, and we started moving. Auffrey's team formed a loose formation around us as Annetta blessed each in turn with fortitude; four in front and two to either side, with the casters clustered in the center. It was a bit crowded at first, probably designed around protecting Auffrey and Anetta, but the warriors spread out a bit more to give us some elbow room and we kept moving.
Our first target was a bridge that the keep overlooked. It was a choke point, but that wouldn't hurt us near as much as it would a larger force. About six orcs were standing guard, but they were mostly lazing about. I don't think they were expecting an attack.
Auffrey tapped me on the shoulder. "I'm going to be trusting you three to choose your own targets. Annetta has gotten fairly good at keeping us all protected and healthy, but if she gets overwhelmed, our lives are in your hands. Try to pace yourself?" Then she handed me a short rod of wood with a carved end. "This should help, but I'll want it back."
I felt the energy humming softly in the wand, wanting to be released. My inner magpie wanted it; maybe I could use it instead of a torch in my off hand? I handed it back regretfully. "I have more options now than I did last time we met; if you're used to having this, you'll want to keep it. Trust me." Between a newfound competence with sword fighting, a few basic fel magic spells, shadow words, and my arcane orb, I was fairly confident about my ability to contribute without burning myself out.
I had my sword in one hand and my orb in the other, and my priestly vestments, the most protective clothing I had that fit my Erich persona, clashed pretty badly with my chainmail gauntlets. I should probably get some armor commissioned; something holy paladins would wear to channel magic better, perhaps. As things stood I was starting on a road that was much more embarrassing in "real life" than it was in a video game. I was wearing a ridiculous clashing outfit because it had the best stats.
Stress resistance lets me get distracted by the strangest things. It was time to attack. The group attempted to get in close enough to cast spells, but one of the orcs spotted us. The most lightly armored of them immediately turned and ran, probably to get reinforcements, while the rest of them got into position and started fighting.
They formed two ranks along the end of the narrow bridge; the two in front drew shields and axes while the ones in back unslung sheafs full of javelins. They started throwing them at us with distressing accuracy; luckily Annetta "caught" the flying spears with shields, but we needed to stop those two, and fast. A shield would only save any given person once.
The front line charged, with the rest of us close behind. Drusilla started spitting curses, as she normally does, fatiguing the orcs and afflicting them with painful boils. I used shadow word pain, mostly because I didn't know any other spells simple enough to be cast on the run. It sucked for me, but it was much worse for the shield bearing orc I used it on. It seemed that in addition to sharing a magnified version of my own pain, it also magnified the pain from Drusilla's curse of corruption, and the jarring sensation in his arm when he blocked the first swing against him. Auffrey's choice of spell on the move was quite a bit more blunt. Her eyes blazed with a blue glow as she conjured a small but intense blast of fire right in front of one of the javelin throwers.
Unfortunately for us, even with the bombardment the orcs were noticeably better fighters than our footsoldiers. They seemed able to power through the pain, at least partially. They weren't fighting intelligently, seeming to go a bit berserk, but they were fighting hard. I was worried until I saw a pattern emerging. Each time one of our boys took a hit, blocked or not, they would then fade back a few steps and let the next person in. Then they would get to the back of the line as their injuries started knitting closed. Annetta was renewing them; they weren't badly injured, so a quick, cheap heal spell was enough to get them back up to speed.
The skorpids dove between the fighters legs, ganging up on the more distant of the two javelin throwers. He skewered one, but between a few good stings and his spontaneous immolation, he was out of the fight quickly.
The fight was over before long, the orcs going down in a hail of fireballs as they tried and failed to break through our regenerating front line. I rushed up and grabbed each of the surviving orcs, shoving them into my inventory; by a lucky coincidence, they were all female. Nice. The one who had been overrun by skorpids was dead, but the other three were simply too tough to go down quickly. We took five to drink, bandage, and rest before resuming our advance. We'd lost nobody but a skorpid so far, and none of us were in a bad state when it came to mana either.
One of the Lions shouted a warning; a counterattack was coming, ten orcs led by a tall one in much heavier armor. Some kind of officer, I supposed. Scouting reports put the number of orcs in the keep at around a hundred; if we could hold off this group of ten, we'd be earning our keep and then some. That said, this was going to be a much harder fight when we didn't outnumber them three to one. They had a good spread: four orcs in heavy armor, three more spear chuckers in leather, two robed figures wielding staves, and the lightly armored scout who'd initially bugged out to gather these reinforcements.
We decided to copy the strategy of our enemies, and set guards at the end of the bridge while our casters stood at the peak of the arched bridge with a good view of the oncoming enemy. "Don't hold back on this one," I noted. "We might need to pull back after we see these ones off." With that I prepared the largest immolation spell I could hold, aiming it at the big orc in front.
He shrugged it off. I kid you not, he acted as if being doused in a magical approximation of gasoline and lit up was just part of the job. Similarly, he didn't seem impressed by Drusilla's standard curses or my word of pain. I was starting to get very worried, once I compartmentalized my shadow word headache out of the front of my mind.
Auffrey largely ignored the biggest threat in the room, instead calling a rather large blast of fire in the center of the group of javelineers. That kept them distracted, mostly with largely superficial burns, but distracted is distracted. It took a lot out of her though; Auffrey switched over to using her wand after that, firing small luminous energy bolts at the enemy.
The scorpids rushed the soft targets in the back. The robed orcs, neither of which was Bashor, didn't seem too tough physically, but that was by orc standards. The pair of them started swinging their staves, and with enough force to end a skorpid if it made contact.
The imps kept laying down fire on the big guy in front. It might be a sunk cost, but he seemed like the leader. If he went down and we were lucky, that might crush morale for the rest of them. In addition, we needed him out of the fight, and fast. Every time he swung his sword, despite the curse of weakness seeming fully functional, Auffrey or I needed to heal someone. It's very possible that curse was the only reason there were people left to heal. I was about to try crushing his mind with the beefiest shadow word I could manage when I heard a familiar noise from my left. The sound of a swooping dragon. I wheeled around to see my assailant.
It was small, but it was swooping towards my head with excellent posture I'd seen modeled by Lividia. If he managed a clean strike with that, I was dead. It was too late for anything fancier than a shield for myself, followed up with a swing of my sword.
I made contact, gloriously, swatting it out of the air. The tiny dragon was smacked down off the side of the bridge, and I had a thought as I saw it swimming to the shore. I pumped it with pain, enough to make myself see stars. Importantly, also enough to make the little dragon start writhing in pain and unable to swim effectively. I could focus on the dragon, and saw it sink beneath the surface, inhaling lake water. I gave it a ten count to get out of the water or resurface. Nothing. I released the pain and turned around. Things had not gone great in my absence.
Three of our warriors had gone down, and almost everyone had injuries from javelins or large patches of dead skin where we'd been hit by necrotic damage. I wasn't sure if the downed ones were dead, so I tossed out renews on each of them first; unfortunately even if they were fine they would have difficulty standing and returning to the fight in all this mess. On a positive note, every orc in my line of sight was tired, on fire, and covered in boils, so Drusilla was doing her job. Remembering how painful it was to channel this much fel magic, I tossed a renew at her too.
Auffrey was unloading fireballs into the big guy, but what finally put him down was the biggest shadowbolt I've seen from Drusilla. He fell over like a marionette with his strings cut. As we had hoped, that sent a shock through his subordinates. They didn't instantly leave, but their backline at least paused for a moment. I decided we needed offense, and launched a heavy shadow bolt of my own at one of the frenzied warriors in front, which didn't kill but it did stagger him enough for the two lions fighting him to get in their licks and take him down. As I doubled over in pain, I was able to focus enough to throw my signature giant smite at the other orc warrior. I was expecting the vertigo this time, so I was able to touch the orb to my forehead and come back to the world in time to see him going down to a fireball from Auffrey. The remaining orcs saw me standing up and overestimated my ability to do that again; they decided now was the time to retreat.
The fight was won, but we were in no state to follow up. Everyone was at least mildly injured, and of the three who went down we had one girl who had lost an arm and a very dead young man. The other girl was pretty alright, in that a bit of healing magic and some bed rest was all she needed. I gave the order to pull out, though I snatched up the corpse of the big orc; maybe there was a bounty on him. We had done what we could, but this assault would come down to the real soldiers, not us.
I checked my app and was very put out to see that Bashor had been killed, presumably on the northern front. Maybe I should have been more proactive about that, but it still felt bad. Fuck this mission and fuck Redridge. We were going to Lakeshire.