Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

As we charge in, more and more of the nearby enemy soldiers realize what's happening.  Unfortunately for them, most of them are unarmed.  Many of the combatants turn and run from our force, causing even more chaos on the battlefield, which works as excellent cover, preventing more of the enemy from interfering in our attack.

I wasn't wrong in my assessment of the suited up soldiers, everything isn't going perfectly. One soldier fires off one of those powerful cutting attacks I saw before, and cleaves through about a dozen of our attack force, and about an equal number of their own chaotically retreating soldiers.

As we get closer, a few of our hobgoblins magically launch javelins at the soldiers with incredible force.  Every javelin that flies forward is nearly instantly met by a mud and stone wall magically placed between us and the soldiers, stopping all the javelins.  As we round the wall, the first of our side that comes around the wall on either side are instantly killed.  A few die in a powerful fireball, and a few others are cut down by multiple rapid sword strikes.

Despite bringing our more elite forces, we're still losing numbers quite quickly, almost exclusively to this small group of soldiers.  We're still a little over a hundred feet from the walls, but that doesn't stop them from firing arrows at us.  I'm thankful that the wall is actually pretty packed thanks to the flooding happening in the city, so their archers are having trouble, and they've run out of ammo for our ballistae, because the ammo was stored at ground level.

The water outside the city has reached ankle deep as our force meets with our target.  Despite our initial losses, as we finally got into melee range, things started going our way.  In this fight, for once in this conflict, we're the side with superior numbers.  The first two casualties of their fifteen come in short succession.  The first dies to a coordinated attack by three of our hobgoblins working as a single fighting unit with steel spears.  Their target managed to deflect two of the three spears using their shield and sword at the same time, but the third strike hit them in the neck.  They didn't go down immediately, but within a few moments, they'd been struck a few more times, and succumbed to their injuries.

The second one to fall died in a one on one with Zaka.  Zaka seems to have gotten quite used to his new troll body, and has adopted some... questionable tactics.  As his enemy thrust their short sword at him, he purposefully drove their sword into his own arm, grabbed their hand and yanked them in towards himself, pulling them off balance.  With his other hand, he gripped their face and cast a point blank fireball, incinerating their head.  After that display, a bunch of onlookers who were unsure about fighting turned tail and ran.

After that, I made my way into the fray and found my own target.  A soldier in heavy metal armor who was successfully fending off four dwarves using some sort of speed enhancement magic or ability.  Thanks to the fact my improved earth spike shoots three spikes out, instead of one, I got in range as the dwarves kept the soldier distracted, and from three sides I drove the earth spikes up in to them.  To their credit, they twisted in a way to immediately avoid any serious injury, but their dodge threw them off balance, allowing a dwarf to land a more devastating strike into one of their legs, after which the other three dwarves were able to land blows bringing them down.

I still have the mana for three more improved earth spikes, so I change targets.  A few more soldiers died, and the person they are defending is now open to attack.  Ultimately, we don't want to kill them, but capture them.  So I move in as the dwarves I was just fighting with also move in.

We're caught off guard by an attack from our target.  They slam their foot into the water, and the ground in front of them raises and falls in a fast moving wave towards us.  Mud and water splashes up, blocking our view for a moment.  Before we can react, two of the dwarves have been cleaved in half by the individual.  It seems we underestimated their combat ability because they were being guarded so heavily.

As the two dwarves' bodies collapse, I reflexively throw earth spikes out, and the individual leaps up and back, dodging the spikes.  Before they land, they send out one of those cutting attacks, lining up both me and a dwarf.  I dodged, but the dwarf had their arm severed at the shoulder as they slipped in the mud while attempting to dodge.

Ok, this is bad.  I have no idea how long this individual can keep this up, or if they have any other tricks up their sleeve.  I don't doubt we can capture them, but the question now is how many of our numbers are going to be sacrificed for it.  I don't have much time to think about that though, as he sends another wave of mud and water at us.  This time we react by diving backwards, and dodge his follow up attack.

That doesn't mean we aren't still able to be hit.  He sends another magic cutting attack at the last dwarf with me.  The dwarf fails to fully dodge the attack, and I'm left in a one-on-one for the moment.  My target shouts something, and the remaining soldiers that are fighting with him let out a roar and their fighting breaks out even more desperately.  More spells fly out wildly from both sides as the fighting becomes more intense around me.

At this point, my goal is just to survive until more fighters on my side can make it in to this central area to fight.  I'm forced to use an emergency defensive measure as the individual charges me with a magically enhanced rush attack.  I place my hand on my leather armor and expend about 100 mana on tectonic sense.

As his sword hits my armor, I'm thrown backwards by the force of the blow, but his sword shatters.  Only a few of us have the ability to use this leather armor in this way.  As part of the tanning process, it was treated specifically with the bark water from the trees here, and then again retreated with it twice in the leather making process.  That resulted in the mana hardening properties from the tree being embedded in the armor.  For the next five minutes or so, the leather should remain as hard and rigid as steel.  That's why my armor is shaped differently than a lot of other soldier's leather.

He seems shocked by what happened to the sword, and jumps back again.  He shouts something, and a new sword gets tossed from somewhere into the area where we are fighting.  I'd like to know where the sword came from, but I can't take my eyes off him, or I risk another lighting fast attack hitting me.

Thankfully, that whole event bought me a few moments to catch my breath.  He does another mud wave move blocking my vision briefly.  I retreat backwards as it approaches, trying to give myself as much space to dodge whatever attack follows.  The wave starts to lose momentum, and another cutting blast flies through the wave itself, and I dive to the ground to dodge it.

As I'm on the ground, in the mud and water, I can see him dashing towards me with that enhanced speed again.  Thankfully, I don't need to be standing to use earth spike, and I put up three defensive spikes right in front of me, forcing him to leap and overshoot me, giving me time to get to my feet again.

This time, he has to suddenly dodge as a fireball flies past him.  From nearby, I see Zaka has made it into the central area here.  His arm that had the sword embedded in it already looks like it has clotted and looks like a day old wound.  His regenerative capabilities are really terrifying.  Combined with his over eight foot stature now he's quite the terrifying presence.

It seems like more of the soldiers are falling and they're now failing to keep our stronger soldiers from forcing their way into this central fight.  I don't know if our enemy's plan is just to take as many of us down with them as they can, or if they expect to escape.  It doesn't change our goal though.

Another mud wave flies toward Zaka, and from this angle, I can see more of what's happening.  The individual runs behind the wave, and readies themself to either use their sword or fire magic through the center of the wave itself, since they can't seem to see through it either.  I start to move in towards it, but I'm not nearly as fast as the individual.

Zaka's fighting style is hard to adapt to if you haven't fought it before though.  Rather than fight defensively, he willingly lets himself get injured to gain advantage in combat.  Rather than dodge the wave, he throws himself through it.  The individual reflexively brings their sword up at Zaka's arm which is coming down in a powerful swing.

The individual ends up going down to one knee due to the power of the swing, but cleaves Zaka's arm completely off at the elbow.  I just get in range to use improved earth spike, aiming all three of the spikes at their legs.  They manage to stumble backwards onto their back, rather than having their legs impaled, though the force of the spikes still causes them to spin in the mud and water and lose control of their sword.

Zaka doesn't seem to care about his cleaved arm, and throws his entire body onto our target in the mud.  He takes his injured, but complete arm, and forcibly brings it down on our target's shins, and I hear a sickening crack.  Our target moves their hand and fires off another cutting magic attack, severing Zaka's other arm.

Zaka, now armless continues using his body to hold our target down.  Our target seems intent on fighting until the end.  I use the last of my mana to earth spike through their forearms, severing them at the elbow.  With their arms severed, and their legs broken, I tell Zaka to get off them, and I pick them up, and shout to make a path to our soldiers.

The target wriggles and struggles, making it hard to carry them, but it seems that without their arms and legs, they aren't able to actually put magic into their resistance.  Despite losing both his arms, Zaka is still completely lucid.  Troll vitality really is terrifying.  As we attempt to carry off our target, a few of the remaining soldiers make last ditch attempts to stop us, but that only results in them getting cut down as they turn their attention away from individuals they are currently fighting.

As we retreat off the battlefield, I notice that most of the unarmed enemy troops have retreated far away from us now.  There are quite a few other soldiers who are dead in the area, and it looks like we lost about half of the forces we came here with.  The enemy seemed to fare much worse though, with lots of soldiers dead in the area.

After a short while, we've made it to relative safety, and join up with the dark elves.