Chapter 113: The Clash
Wilbur knew that after tonight, he'd never be able to stay in Burk Town again. He gave the order anyway. He'd grown tired of the adventurer's life, but Fiat's old kindness still deserved repaying. "So this will be the last thing the Gael Advance Corps does under your name. We'll have your revenge."
He'd stopped weighing who was right and who was wrong. This chance in front of him was the only one they'd get. Hollingburton's people were few — wait for them to regroup and call in reinforcements, and the window would close for good.
Witescroft and Malmer, hearing the same news, threw their full strength into it as well, though neither of them shared Wilbur's clarity. Both wanted the other man dead and the position that came with it. Two floods of men surged toward Hollingburton's outpost.
Rose watched it all unfold in silence. You're dead now, and I'll have your revenge for you. Hollingburton is too strong — this is the only window we'll get. Rest now. Whatever happens, I intend to survive. This is all I can do for you. Don't hold it against me.
She turned to one of her men. "How are things with the dark elves?"
"They've mostly agreed to our terms for defecting. Just a few details left to work out," the young man said, his eyes bright with something close to devotion. He knew what she'd suffered, humiliations no ordinary person could have survived, and still she'd kept reaching toward light and freedom, like an iris blooming somewhere high in the mountains. He felt himself unworthy, and wanted nothing more than to stay near her.
"Given everything at play, we can only survive by slipping through the cracks," she said, half to herself, half meant for the young man beside her — Ellman. "You understand — Hollingburton, the Druids, the vampire Dracula bloodline, and the dark night elves are the real powers standing behind Burk Town. And now there's this mysterious devil cult on top of it. People like us are nothing but pawns on the front stage. Without something backing us, we'd be chewed up and swallowed whole."
...
At the Hollingburton outpost, Evan and the others watched the tide of adventurers surge toward them — over a hundred men between the two factions. If not for the protective array, the place would already have fallen. Its light shimmered across every exit of the building. Jaymes and Peter had gone pale. Fifth-tier mages both, but neither of them had ever faced a mob like this — nearly two hundred men bearing down, faces twisted like they meant to tear someone apart with their teeth. Neither had seen anything like it in his life.
Lidis and Raight, though, burned with fury at the sight. The mob brought back memories of their four dead companions, of the days spent in captivity wishing for death. Raight, once a handsome man, now had only one working eye — and rage burned in it now like a fire.
An Explosive Fireball and a string of ice lances tore into the crowd as they chanted. The fireball detonated, throwing several men into the air, while others were run through by the lances. Confusion rippled through the mob, but the charge had already gathered too much momentum to stop. Evan heard someone shouting: "Brothers, avenge the boss! There's only five or six of them in there — kill them all! There's gold and silver in there for the taking. Charge!"
Another voice called out over the chaos. "Mages aren't so tough without knights to protect them! We've got mages of our own. There's two women mages in there too — don't you dare let them go, better than anything you'd find at the brothel. Move, brothers!"
Voices shouted over each other in the din, magic flashing and roaring through the crowd as fireballs shot back toward the outpost from the mob's own side — though clearly cast by unskilled hands, extinguished by ice lances before they even closed the distance.
Jaymes and Peter steadied themselves and began chanting, throwing their own spells into the fight. Fortunately, the protective array still held, and the attackers had no way to break through into the building.
Wilbur, Witescroft, and Malmer held back at the rear, watching the mob surge forward screaming. Fury flared in Jessica. She launched into a summoning chant, and a fire giant materialized in the middle of the crowd — over two men tall, flames roaring off its entire body, a massive burning sword in one hand. It grinned, and that sword split an adventurer clean in half. Before the screaming could even start, the giant seized another man in its grip, the man shrieking and thrashing as he turned into a living torch.
The fire giant flung the burning man aside and swung its sword again, cutting down two more adventurers with a single stroke. Wilbur roared and leapt forward, his greatsword blazing with light, cutting straight down at the giant. The giant bared its burning teeth and raised its own blade to block.
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Wilbur roared again, and the two swords met with a crack — the fire giant's blade snapped clean in two. He didn't let up, driving his blade forward into the giant's body with a flash of steel. The giant let out a horrible cry and burst apart. Jessica went white at the sight.
Of the six of them, only Evan hadn't lifted a finger yet. He drew something from his ring that looked like bone-ash powder — not that he actually needed such a component to cast, but he couldn't afford to reveal himself as a lich, so he kept up the pretense of a necromancer's methods.
The powder scattered outward as he chanted, and dark clouds gathered overhead almost instantly, blotting out the sun. Skeletons rose from the ground one after another — no one could have said where they'd come from, or how there could be so many — and thin black smoke swept out quickly to blanket the enemy outside.
Undead Calamity. Wilbur's face went hard. Witescroft and Malmer traded a look of dread. They'd planned to join the fighting themselves before long, but the sight of Undead Calamity unfolding sank their stomachs straight to the floor.
Skeletons surged forward in overwhelming numbers, three or four to a man. Every time an adventurer cut down one or two, more pressed in behind them. The mages could only maintain shields around themselves, powerless to help anyone else — and worse, every fallen adventurer rose again moments later, black smoke curling up from the corpse as it staggered to its feet and lunged at whoever had been fighting beside it a moment before. By now, the other five had all stopped fighting, watching the endless ranks of skeletons rise. A single skeleton wasn't much of a threat on its own, but numbers like this were another matter — which was exactly why every nation's army sought out necromancers. A necromancer's combat value couldn't be measured the same way as an ordinary mage's.
Wilbur swung his greatsword, cutting down five or six skeletons in as many strokes, but more kept coming, and he could feel the air around him growing steadily colder. An ordinary man wouldn't even need the skeletons to kill him — left in that cold long enough, he'd turn into a walking corpse himself, just like his fallen comrades.
Evan had triggered Undead Calamity without truly drawing on his lich's full nature, and even so, the tide of the battle had turned completely. This was the perpetual awkwardness of a necromancer's reputation — pound for pound, a necromancer's raw power was no greater than any other mage of equal standing, but in mass combat, nothing else came close. Even a weak necromancer could summon a dozen, even a hundred skeletons to fight at once. Against a true ability-user, that meant little — but against an ordinary crowd of men, it was terrifying. Other schools had their own tools for group combat, fire mages with their meteor showers and the like, but those required real skill, at minimum senior-mage rank, to cast at all. A necromancer needed none of that, which was exactly why the profession carried such a poor name — and why every army in every kingdom wanted one all the same.
There was another distinction worth noting, between mages and knights. Knights drew on an entirely different power system, developing raw physical capability until it matched a mage's own strength, and their profession had splintered into three broad branches: the traditional knight; thieves and rangers, leaning toward stealth and assassination; and ranged fighters like archers and spear-throwers. These divisions weren't rigid, of course — outside the traditional knight path, most other professions blended to some degree with magic. Dozens of specializations existed, many of them confined to narrow niches, such as the mage-archer, a rare hybrid who bound sword-force to a bow while firing enchanted arrows like Explosive Fire Arrows.
A true knight could stand toe to toe with a mage, but the two remained fundamentally different. A knight, for all his strength, could only fight one opponent at a time, while a mage's capacity for group combat left knights far behind.
That was exactly the trap Wilbur, Witescroft, and Malmer now found themselves in. Sword-force flared around each of them, and locally, they held the advantage — but across the whole battlefield, the mob they'd led was collapsing. Screams rose without pause, morale cratering fast, some men already turning to flee. But there was no escaping the reach of Undead Calamity. The fallen rose behind them, turned into walking corpses, and lunged for whoever had just been fighting at their side.
Jessica watched it unfold and began a fresh chant. Summoning within the range of Undead Calamity cost far more effort than usual, but it was worth it. Blue light descended over the battlefield, and a creature over a man's height materialized — ice-blue from head to toe, wrapped in what looked like armor of frost, three-foot blade-like claws jutting from the back of each hand, three to a hand. An Ice Claw — a creature from another plane, built equally for bitter cold and brutal close combat. It let out a roar the instant it appeared, cold radiating out seven or eight cubits in every direction. An adventurer caught within that range barely had time to register the swipe of its claw before he'd been cut into four pieces.
Wilbur stood too far off to intervene, but Witescroft was close enough. He roared and charged, wielding a flail — a two-piece chain weapon, a long haft trailing a length of chain ending in a hexagonal, spiked mace-head. He slid into position and swung, the mace-head flaring white, driving upward at an angle with crushing force, aiming to knock the Ice Claw creature clean off its feet.
The creature spun and swung its right claw down to meet the blow. There was a crack, the sound of ice shattering, and the claws on its right hand broke apart. Its body swayed for a moment before it pivoted, its left claw already sweeping in on the follow-through.
Witescroft's flail had shattered the creature's right claw clean off, though the impact had jolted him hard in return. He was a man who'd survived a hundred battles, though, and he pivoted left, stepping forward with his front foot, drawing his flail's chain in tight before releasing it again in a whipping arc straight at the Ice Claw's chest.