Chapter 167
The horde was still coming.
More of them broke from the treeline every few seconds, pouring through the gaps between the stacked logs and down into the field, with no sign yet of the numbers behind them thinning.
The defensive line ran the length of the cleared ground, stretching north from the sea in the east and bending south along the western edge where the fields gave way to bog. Hundreds of people were spread across it in small clusters, each holding their own stretch of car, trench, and open ground. A second trench ran the same course further in, closer to town, serving as the last obstacle standing between whatever made it through the outer defences and the fighters holding the line proper.
At the western end, Sam knelt with his eyes shut at the edge of the bog, his mana building slow while Nessa and a handful of trainees held the gap in front of him without the fog to help. Between him and the centre, Phil was still cutting a path through anything that came close, the ground around him scorched black in patches from earlier. At the centre itself, where the ground bent from west to north, Leo and Kai held the choke point they'd started at, right at the narrow end of the car funnel where it crossed the second trench, bodies stacked at the base of it. East of them, along the northern stretch, Luka's shield had gone back up after the scare with the flank, the line reformed with Torren beside him, still dark with blood. Further along still, toward where the line ran out near the sea, Bram's hammer kept falling, Aldric's spear kept finding gaps, and Ronan cut through anything that made it past the pit traps near them.
Every part of it was holding. None of it was easy.
Then the rocky debris piled across one of the cars gave way without warning.
Archers had been focused on the cars for a while, picking off anything that tried to use the stakes and rubble as a foothold, and it had been working. But the chains on one car holding the load in place could only take so much weight and impact before something finally gave. When it did, the whole pile came loose at once, tumbling off the side of the car and leaving a wide, easy gap where there had been a wall a second ago.
Monsters were over it within seconds.
Phil was closest, already throwing fireball after fireball into the breach, but they were coming through faster than he could burn them back. One group went down, then another, but they were replaced before the smoke cleared. The mass of gathering monsters started to push for the section of the line Phil was holding, and he knew they wouldn't stop the sudden numbers pushing into them at once.
"Kai!" Phil shouted, already backing up a step. "Bit of help!"
Kai was moving before Leo had fully processed the shout, cutting a straight line toward the breach.
"Hold this gap," Kai called back over his shoulder. "Whatever it takes."
Leo nodded, even though Kai wasn't looking to see it.
He was gone before Leo could argue, cutting a straight line down the field toward the breach, his blade already swinging by the time he reached it.
Leo didn't have time to watch how it went. The line in front of him hadn't stopped just because Kai had, and neither could he.
Something pale and fast crossed the field off to his right a second later, and Leo caught the shape of it just long enough to place it. Parmo, loosing something that wasn't an arrow, ice blooming huge and sudden where the gap had opened, sealing it white and solid before more could make it through. Another wall went up beside the first, then a third, boxing the whole breach in.
Good. That was one problem handled.
His wasn't.
Without Kai beside him the gap felt different, wider than it had a minute ago, and Leo could feel it in the way the trainees around him were fighting now, half a step further back than they'd been holding with Kai there. Someone flinched at a strike that should have been an easy parry. Someone else missed a step and nearly paid for it. The whole formation was bending under weight it hadn't been built to take alone, and Leo could feel exactly how close it was to breaking properly.
Fine.
He reached for the mana and let Lightning Amp take him.
The world went strange around the edges first, the way it had that day training with Luka, everything slowing relative to him rather than the other way round. He was moving before he'd finished deciding to, the Sarren already swinging through the first goblin in his path, the blade meeting no more resistance than it would through water.
He didn't stop to check what he'd hit.
He caught two more mid-stride, one cut carrying through both of them at once, the Sarren's reach doing what a shorter blade never could. Something screamed, the sound carrying on longer than was natural in his faster state, an eerie death rattle that continued as he kept moving. Another slash removed the heads of three more that had been bunched too close together to matter.
He quickly lost count of the deaths he caused, his sword reaping lives like a scythe through wheat.
The mana drain was building the whole time, a weight settling into his chest that he knew from the training session was going to hit hard the second he let go of the spell, but he kept moving anyway, cutting through anything between him and the edge of the breach, until there wasn't anything left standing close enough to reach.
He dropped the amp.
The world snapped back to its normal speed all at once, and Leo staggered half a step with the sudden weight of the drain crashing into him, breath coming ragged, the Sarren dripping in his hand. Around him, the ground was a mess of bodies, more than he could easily count, and the goblins still coming from further back had frozen where they stood, staring at what was left of the ones that had been ahead of them a few seconds ago.
His own people had gone quiet too. Every trainee near him was staring, wide-eyed, the same look his mates had given him back on the training field, except this time nobody was smiling.
"Back in the line!" Leo shouted, forcing the words out through the exhaustion clawing at him. "Now! Hold it!"
It broke the freeze. People scrambled back into position, weapons up, the gap closing again as bodies filled the space he'd carved out.
Kai reached him a few seconds later, his blade still red, breathing hard himself.
"You alright?"
"Yeah." Leo's legs didn't feel entirely like his own. "Just need a second."
"You'll have it. Try to get your mana back as quick as you can. I'll hold the breach until then. Nice spell, by the way. I'd like to try sparring against you using that when this is all over." He patted Leo on the shoulder and walked toward the breach.
***
Sam finally had enough mana to recast his fog.
Around him, the small unit holding the gap looked worn out, shoulders lower, breathing harder between swings. Nessa wasn't tired, or if she was, she wasn't showing it, blood streaked up one arm and across her jaw, her focus locked on whatever was directly in front of her and nothing past that.
"Back," Sam said. "Now."
Nobody argued. The line pulled back a step, then another, and Sam let the fog roll out the same as before, wide across the boggy ground, swallowing everything past the first few feet.
A handful of goblins had already pushed ahead of where the fog caught, too far forward to get trapped with the rest.
"Archers!" Sam called up toward the platform, not bothering to look.
The platform answered before he'd finished the sentence, arrows finding all six in the time it took Sam to turn back and check the fog had settled properly. It had. Same as before, quiet, contained, the whole mess of them stuck and blind on the other side of it.
Nessa lowered her blade a fraction, breathing out slow.
"That's better," she said.
***
Phil's swords were still burning when the goblin got close enough to matter, and the fire did most of the work before the blade even needed to.
He cut through it and the two behind it in the same motion, flame catching on whatever it touched, and the smell hit him again the way it had every time since the fighting properly started, thick and wrong, catching in the back of his throat.
Nobody told you about that. Games, films, none of it. You saw the fire, you saw the swords, but nobody ever mentioned what it actually smelled like when it worked.
He gagged, swallowed it down, and kept moving. One of the trainees near him made a similar noise and spat to the side without breaking stride.
"Stinks, right? I wish I'd known that when I learned this stupid spell," Phil said, not sure if knowing would have changed his decision. As bad as the stench is, it is undeniably cool.
"You'd have still wanted it," the trainee muttered.
He grinned back. "Yeah, true."
Phil cut down the next one before it got close enough to ruin more of his day.
***
Ben had barely caught his breath from the dome moment when the wall went up.
He hadn't seen the gap open, not really, just a sudden mess on the west side of the field, cars buckling and something breaking through where there shouldn't have been a way in. Before he could say anything about it, ice bloomed huge across the gap, white and solid, sealing the breach in seconds.
[DanO] what was that??
[CJ] did someone just wall off the whole gap??
"That's Parmo," Ben said, grinning despite himself. "He's got an ice spell, must be new, I've never seen him do that before."
[Poppy_R] that's insane
[MattyG] these people just casually have the coolest powers ever
He'd only just started explaining it properly when the centre of the field did something that made him forget the sentence entirely.
One second Leo stood holding the gap in the cars, cutting down goblins same as he had been for the last however-long. The next second he wasn't there at all, and then he was somewhere else, twenty feet away, and everything in between him and there was just falling apart.
[Ste] what just happened
[DanO] BEN DID YOU SEE THAT
[CJ] rewind it I can't tell what I just watched
"I don't think I can rewind it," Ben said, a little helplessly. "I don't think anyone can. That's Leo, though. Seems all of them got a bit of a level up recently or something. He looks like the Flash with a katana."
The goblins on the field had stopped moving entirely, the ones still standing frozen in place around what was left of the ones that weren't. Ben watched Leo stagger, just slightly, before shouting something Ben couldn't make out from this distance, and the whole line around him snapped back into motion like nothing had happened.
[MattyG] is he okay?
[Ste] he looked like he could barely stand for a second there
"He's fine," Ben said. "Look, he's still moving. I bet that was mana drain. That shit sucks, man. It's like suddenly feeling like you have the flu."
Chat had mostly stopped typing questions and started just typing reactions, disbelief scrolling faster than Ben could properly read it.
[CJ] I still can't believe these idiots are pulling this shit off. I knew Leo in school. He once told me he couldn't hear me cos the sun was in his eyes. It was midnight and the sun was actually a torch in the middle of a tent...
[DanO] That sounds about right. It's surreal watching this. It's so cool but at the same time, my heart's in my stomach man. This is worse than watching England in the World Cup
Ben didn't have anything clever to add to that. He just kept watching, kept the stream running, and hoped everyone came out of this on the other side.