Unchosen Champion

Coop joined other residents and phantoms that were similarly rushing toward the civilization shard. The distance between the southern wall of the fort and the southern town circle was crowded with half-rested reinforcements that abandoned their breaks in order to protect the shard. It had only been two minutes since the buzzer alerted them of the start of the third wave, but those few minutes were enough for another battle line to be drawn.

Rear Admiral Gideon, the leader of the phantom army, was personally leading the forces on their second front. He had posted himself directly between the glowing red civilization shard and the enemy forces across the bridge to the north. Gideon stood ramrod straight with a gleaming cavalry saber in his hand as he calmly directed the wraith messengers around him. Other soldiers and residents rushed around the town circle in a chaotic scramble to find suitable positions, but the Rear Admiral had established a zone of calm that was slowly spreading thanks to his steady presence alone. His formal leadership style was the polar opposite of Captain Kayla’s charismatic approach, but his competence was as clear as day.

Balor’s dirt and rock barriers had already been manned on either side of the end of the bridge, facing north, with phantom archers lined up with buckets full of arrows behind them. The bridge was completely blocked by shielded fighters, side by side, in a phalanx that waited for the gathering midrange fighters to form at their flank. They were preparing to push forward, across the bridge, to reclaim the open ground on the other side.

The monsters were streaming across the bridge and finding themselves stymied by the shields. The invaders couldn’t reach a critical mass as long as the volleys of cannon shots kept thinning their numbers. The Eye of the Storm was moored on a diagonal, halfway down the eastern half of the canal. The Tempest Fleet flagship was firing a series of cannon barrages, one deck at a time, stifling the accumulation of monsters and giving Gideon’s forces a chance to mount their defenses.

The cannon barrels that poked beyond the portholes glowed orange with heat as they waited for their turn to fire. Windchaser mirrored the much larger ship on the western side, though it only boasted a handful of cannons. Pirate casters held themselves up on rigging as they added their spells to the suppressive fire.

Coop walked into Gideon’s command area, intending to share information on the Ruin Excavators, but the Rear Admiral was already prepared. He interrupted Coop with a polite greeting and his own explanation of their enemy: small enemies with strong carapaces, weak to blunt damage, debilitating afflictions from both the claws and the tails, elites with a capacity for launching projectiles, preference to ambush and swarm, and a possible concealed commander.

Coop thought that covered it.

Gideon gave Coop permission to fight autonomously, whenever he was ready, with the simple direction of ‘go wild.’ The rest would follow his start.

Before Coop incited their offensive across the bridge, he pulled Mikey B away from the back of the phalanx to find out where Amanda was. Mikey pointed her out among the fighters, so Coop brought them together and gave them a special assignment, asking them to relay a message on his behalf and to recruit one of Kayla’s corvettes to do it. They promised to get it done. Coop let them go and prepared for another fight.

Balor’s stone bridge connected the settlement’s two town circles. Where the southern circle held the civilization shard in its center, the northern circle now had a brand new cavern as its centerpiece.

Ruin Excavators were crawling out of the hole and scampering into the north half of the courtyard. The monsters were scattering as soon as they reached the surface, spreading like a wave of insects that were suddenly exposed to light. Some were launching attacks on the shielded buildings and others seemed to search for places to set up ambushes, all while more were constantly leaving the darkness of the cavern. Many of the monsters wanted to rush across the bridge to attack the people gathered on the south side, but the Eye of the Storm’s cannons concentrated on the monsters that left their lair from the southern edge and reduced the monster’s numbers to a manageable level while Windchaser took care of stragglers.

Coop inspected one of the monsters from his position behind the phalanx.