Chapter 168
Ronan caught the trainee's expression between kills, the guy barely upright, his spear shaking slightly in his grip. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically, despite the UI's effects tempering most of everything.
"Nearly there," Ronan said, cutting down the next one without breaking stride. "Won't be much longer now."
The recruit didn't answer, just nodded, and reset his footing the way he'd been taught.
***
Nothing had tried to pass through the fog in a while.
Sam could feel everything inside the shroud, so he knew how little the enemy was trying to push forward. He wasn't sure if that was due to the fog's reappearance or the nature of how the group ahead of them had been cut down so effortlessly. It could even be the lingering memory of what was left after the fog had faded the first time. Sam had caused that, and even he felt unsettled by it.
"They've stopped," Nessa said, her blades still up, watching. "Whatever's left of them. Morale's gone."
Sam didn't drop the fog; he knew it wasn't over yet. But he let himself believe her.
***
"Anything?" Frank asked, his binoculars fixed on the centre of the field.
John didn't answer straight away, watching the same stretch of ground. The flow through the gap had been thinning for a while now, with fewer bodies pushing through each minute, and for the last stretch of it, there had been nothing at all.
"Nothing's come through in about thirty seconds," John said.
"Could be regrouping."
"Could be." John kept watching. "Give it another minute."
The minute passed slow, both of them silent, the treeline behind the centre gap staying empty the whole time.
"I think that's it," John said. "I think that's the last of them in the middle."
Frank was already reaching for the comm. "Tell Leo."
***
Leo felt the message arrive in his head. He'd been waiting for this and knew this battle was coming to an end.
Let's hope this goes off perfectly, first time.
[Frank] Centre's thinned out. Might be your window.
He didn't need it explained further than that. He knew exactly what it meant, what they'd planned for, and what he'd been waiting to hear since this whole thing started.
He turned toward the water mages, who'd been standing near the base of operations, watching, waiting for exactly this.
"Now!" Leo shouted. "Do it now!"
The response was immediate. Four of them stepped forward together, hands raised, and water surged out, arcing over the cars and coming down in sheets across the packed ground between them. It soaked fast, pooling in the ruts and dips already churned up by hours of fighting, running along the base of the cars themselves until the whole stretch between the two rows glistened wet in the afternoon light.
"That's it," one of the mages called. "That's everything we've got."
It would be more than enough.
Leo crouched down and grabbed the first cable where it ran along the base of the nearest car. The cable continued along the line of cars, wrapped around the axle of the vehicles before moving onto the next. The end of the cable ended somewhere in the mud, near the centre of the gap, probably trampled into the churned earth. He moved to his right to find the second. Kai was already moving to cover him, same as they'd planned, blade up, watching the gap for anything that might close the distance before Leo finished.
"Ready?" Kai called.
"Ready."
Leo closed his eyes, checked his remaining mana to find it more than enough, and then he channeled his lightning touch spell.
The charge hit both cables at once, and the sound that followed wasn't anything Leo had braced for: a crack that rolled out across the whole field, loud enough to feel in his teeth, followed immediately by a low, awful hum as the current found the water and spread. Every goblin standing in the soaked ground between the cars seized at once, their bodies locking rigid, some thrown clear off their feet by the force of it. The ones that weren't touching water directly weren't spared either, the current arcing between bodies pressed too close together to avoid it, catching one after another in a chain that raced down the length of the enclosure.
It didn't stop quickly. Leo held the cast as long as he could without risking injury or total mana drain. He watched as the whole packed mass of the centre convulsed and dropped, smoke rising faintly off wet fur and hide where the charge had run hottest.
Then it was done, and the field in front of him was still.
Leo let go of the cables and staggered, catching himself against the nearest car. Thirty percent of his mana, maybe more, was gone in the space of a few seconds, and the fatigue that came with it hit him almost as hard as the drain from the Amp had.
Kai was there before he fully registered the big wolf moving, his vision going dark at the edges, the feeling of nearly passing out washing over him. Kai's hand landed on his shoulder, steadying him.
"That," Kai said, staring out at what was left of the centre, "was amazing. Well done, son."
Leo didn't have the breath to answer properly, but he smiled all the same. He nodded, watching smoke curl up off bodies that weren't moving anymore, the gap that had been the horde's main avenue into the field now clear all the way back to the second trench.
***
Ben hadn't moved in almost a minute.
He'd seen the water mages step up, watched them soak the ground without understanding why, and then the sound had hit, loud enough that he flinched even from this distance, the chat exploding across his vision faster than he could read any of it.
[DanO] WHAT WAS THAT
[CJ] did the whole field just light up??
[Ste] Leo just fried the lot of them... Holy shit
He found his voice eventually, though it came out smaller than he meant it to.
"Yeah, you're right. That was Leo," he said. "I think. I think that was the plan the whole time."
[Poppy_R] is it over??
[MattyG] please tell me that's most of them
Ben looked out at what was left of the centre, the ground scattered with bodies, smoke still rising thin off some of them, the gap that had been swallowing the horde for the last hour and a half now empty and quiet.
"I don't know if it's over," he said slowly. "But that was most of what was coming through the middle. I think that's most of it."
[CJ] these people are actually insane
[DanO] in a good way though right?? that has to be a good thing
"Yeah." Ben let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Yeah, that's a good thing."
***
The ground between the cars was black in patches where the water had boiled off fastest, steam still rising thin off the wet stretches that hadn't. Bodies lay tangled everywhere, some scorched dark at the point of contact, most simply still, the whole packed mass of them silent in a way nothing on this field had been in hours.
Leo stayed where he was, his breath coming slow and ragged, watching Kai move through it.
"Spears up!" Kai called, already striding into the wreckage. "Anything twitching gets finished. Don't take chances."
Recruits and guards fell in behind him, spreading out across the churned ground, their blades and spear points finding anything that so much as flinched. It didn't take long. Most of what was down had gone down for good.
They reached the outer trench a few minutes later, and Leo watched from a distance as the group slowed, taking in what was left there. Bodies were caught on the spikes at the bottom, most of them not moving, a few still twitching weakly. Kai's people finished those quickly and without ceremony, and then Kai raised a hand and the group split, half peeling west and half east, moving fast now that the centre was clear behind them.
***
Phil felt the shout come through before he saw the reason for it.
"Push in five!" someone called down the line. "Everything you've got, now!"
He didn't need telling twice. He hurled everything he had left into the fog's edge where the goblins were still packed and blind, fireball after fireball, the flames catching wet fur and scorching through anything close enough to burn.
***
Parmo emptied half his remaining stock into the eastern flank in the same handful of seconds, explosive arrows arcing into the packed mass of goblins still pressing at Luka's line, each one going off in a burst that scattered bodies and opened gaps in the crowd that hadn't been there a moment before.
"Go, go, go!" Rika shouted somewhere behind him, already nocking her own.
***
Ben watched it happen from above, and for the first time since the stream started, he didn't have anything at all to say.
Kai's group hit the west flank from behind at the exact moment Sam and Nessa's people pushed forward through the last of the fog, the two forces closing on what was left of the horde from both directions at once. On the east, the timing was even tighter, Kai's other group slamming into the goblins' rear just as Luka's line surged forward to meet them, the whole mass of enemies caught between hammer and anvil with nowhere left to run.
The fighting slowed section by section rather than all at once, but it didn't take much longer after that.
[DanO] oh my god they've got them
[CJ] it's actually working, look
[Ste] This whole thing has been like watching a movie. I know it's not, but this is the sort of thing you watch on TV. I still can't believe that's our mates down there.
Ben watched until there was nothing left standing on the field that wasn't wearing an ally's colours.
He let out a breath that felt like it had been sitting in his chest for hours.
"I think it's over," he said quietly. "I think we actually did it."