Runeblade

A deep blue bird flashed past a window, appearing in view for only a fraction of a second. It likely thought itself safe — blocks away, and obscured by buildings. Hells, the only reason she could see it in the first place was that the front half of the building they flew past had been crushed by a boulder some beast had lobbed into the city earlier in the night.

It was enough; Kenva snapped to the movement immediately.

Gotcha.

That flock had been a right pain — Barshnem Needlers the system called them. Bastards to the last, all twelve had been flying low, dipping through streets to harass everyone they could find with piercing hails of feathers.

Not everyone had escaped with injuries.

Damn things were wily. Hiding from her since she’d taken out a third of their number. They wouldn’t escape a second time.

She knew their flight pattern now; the way they clustered and dipped through the allies. From that one glimpse, she could practically see them through the walls — aided all the while by Way of the Survivalist and her Mentis aspect.

The low chatter of the other archers on the siege tower calling targets fell into the background. Drawing her bow, Kenva felt the strain of its limbs — a tier two weapon of war that held enough tension to snap a grown man's leg.

Stamina and mana flooded into her arrow, one of the ones she had sung from Hanrick's tree. That flock liked to spread out; if she wanted to take them out with a single shot, she’d need to layer Shattering Rain with her latest skill.

Weaving the two abilities was tough — she wasn’t anywhere close to as dextrous as Ianmus or Kaius when it came to manipulating energy.

Gritting her teeth, Bare Thy Heart snapped into place, and her arrow was surrounded by the ghost of a spearlike thorn. Her back ached — gods it hurt to hold the bow at full draw.

Yet despite the discomfort, she didn’t let even the faintest tremor show in her posture — as still and statuesque as if she was carved from steel.

Every bit of her focus was on a ruined wooden house, five spots down from where she’d spotted a needler through the window. Its roof had collapsed. Beams propped up the ruins — leaving a thin gap barely a handspan wide wide that gave her an angle into the street beyond.

Even for her, it would be a hell of a shot. Not to thread the gap. She could do that with her eyes closed, even if it was multiple city blocks away. No, it all came down to if she judged their movement right.

There was no sign of the needlers. No shadows; no flashes of a wing tip over the roofs; no reflections as they flew past a fortuitously angled window. Nothing that she could use to see if she’d judged right.

It was all down to trust. Had she judged right? Did she know her target's instincts, even better than they knew themselves?

The corner of her mouth tweaked up. Of course she did.

Kenva loosed, the heavy snap of her bow making the closest archers to her jump.

The wind shattered before her arrow, screaming. An illusory thorn as large as a sword arced through the night.

She focused on that slot in the broken house, her tiny window into the street beyond. Her arrow shot through the wreckage, skimming past splintered beams and broken roof tiles by the barest of hairs.

A flash of deep blue eclipsed the hole. Her arrow vaporised it, and the tightly bound energy within her projectile detonated. An ear splitting crack resounded, audible even over the ever present din of war.

Barshnem Needler - Level 133

Beast, Harrasser

…

Barshnem Needler - Level 137

Beast, Harrasser

Kenva flicked to the notifications. Nine. Nice, she’d finally gotten the fuckers. Goddamn winged rats, they’d been playing hell on the ground teams.

Her slight grin vanished as the building wreckage she’d shot through let out a pained groan. It collapsed, dust and debris pluming upwards.

Whoops.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw Ianmus was still facing the other way, firing his solar rays like a clan-trained deadeye. Each one dropped a beast that harassed the fighters on the wall.

Thank the gods he hadn’t noticed. Property destruction was…amateurish.

“Kenva! We’re supposed to be saving the city, not levelling it!”

That wasn’t fair! There was no way he saw — he was just assuming it was her doing. Bastard.

Still, she had more work to do. A flock of particularly tricksy birds was not her normal prey — there were far many other threats to deal with. After its initial push, the Tyrant seemed fit to pull back most of its Silvers, no longer spending them wastefully on a frontal assault. Now, they were under constant harassment. Flying monstrosities, strafing over the city under the cover of their weaker brethren to sow as much devastation as possible.

It was their fault the city looked like Kaius had dropped a Starfall on it. A war of attrition, grinding them down and never letting them rest.

Her, Ianmus, and some of the other mages from Mystral were just about the only deterrent stopping those flying creatures from running roughshod over the walls. She and Ianmus were covering the eastern quadrant, where the action was heaviest.

And boy was it heavy. They’d already brought down bloody four of the bastards!

Kenva scanned the night — dropping any flier she could reach with unenhanced arrows. It had been an hour since they’d seen a Silver one. Too long — and more than a couple of them were damn fast. It was hard to take them out when they only ever blitzed through the horde above, dropping as many skills as they could before vanishing again.

The dragonfly was the worst — a skyborn lord, the system had called it. Damn near as long as a caravan, it was a bloody terror. Too many had fallen to its acidic bolts.

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She settled on a group of guards far below her dragging a wagon full of wounded towards the well defended temples at the city centre. Not all of them were moving.

It was a stark reminder of what was at stake. She couldn’t save everyone, she knew that — all she could do was fight like hell.

That skyborn needed to go. Thankfully Porkchop had managed to piss the thing off. It might have simply been the Warden’s Challenge he roared whenever the thing appeared, or it might have been the chunk of masonry the big lug had managed to lob in its general direction. Regardless, the skyborn spent most of its time trying to melt her friend down.

It wasn’t really working. Porkchop was tough. He benefited from Kaius’s absurd resistances, and the creature's strafing attacks gave him too much time to heal. The weeping sores it left still looked agonising, and Porkchop couldn’t do squat to stop it.

So she searched the night, hoping to spot it and put it down so that her friend could have a much needed break. He had far more important things to focus on, like holding the wall from all the other beasts that kept trying to clamber over it.

It didn’t take long for the call she was waiting for to come.

“By the matriarchs, the hell beast is back! Can it not just die!” Porkchop said, his rumbling fury clear. A heartbeat later, his roar cut through the constant yells of battle — a deep basso she would recognise anywhere.

His words sent a jolt down Kenva’s spine. She loosed her arrow, skewering a bird that was about to dive for an archer on her right. Racing across the tower, she skidded to a halt beside Ianmus. His three keyseals had formed concentric rings atop his staff, and he was flooding mana into the most simplistic one. It was the keyseal he’d created in their delve, the one that helped him stabilise and hasten his freecast spells.

Whatever he was doing must have been complex.

His Preeminent Halo was effective, but the dragonfly they were after had a tendency to change the direction of its flight every few seconds. The spell simply moved too slowly.

“Spotted it yet?” she asked.

She could see Porkchop on the wall to her east, his armour covered in gore as he slammed his claws into the neck of a speckled feline beast half his size. His lower half was smoking — caustic fluid running in rivulets as it seeped between the cracks of his heavy plate.

Watching blood sizzle as it hit the acidic Skill, Kenva bit back a wince. Gods, how did he just ignore it? She was no stranger to pain, Porkchop was moving like he hadn’t even been hit!

“There!” Ianmus said, pointing to a patch of cloud high above the battlefield, “It’s hiding in the shadow!”

Four wings buzzed in a rhythmic blur as the dragon fly hovered, obscured by its fellow aerial beasts that flocked around it.

Its tail lanced forward, curving under its body as a bubble of noxious fluid steamed at its tip. The bolt of acid rocketed free.

“Watch out!” she called, sending the message to Porkchop.

He dodged a little too late. Acid splashed over his pauldron, and he let out an infuriated howl.

“I hate this thing! Bastard won't even fight me properly!”

Kenva’s mind raced. They needed to bring it down somehow, but the bloody dragonfly never came close enough for them to pin it down!

“Any ideas?” she asked, desperately hoping the man had something.

He gave her a terse nod, still focused on his shaping. “This spell's going to be more of a moving wall of light than a ray — it’ll be weaker, and slower than normal, but I'll be able to manoeuvre it. Think you can take out one of the dragonfly’s wings if I use it to hide the angle of your shot?”

That would be perfect! She was certain the creature was a visual hunter like its mundane cousins. If Ianmus could force it into a poorly timed dodge, she was sure she could hit it.

“Do it.”

She drew an arrow, flooding it continuously with Howl of the North Wind. She needed the extra speed and power it would bring. Besides, the insects' wings were delicate — if she could take one or two of them out, the Skill’s windburst might be enough to knock it straight out of the sky.

“Hurry up, please!” Porkchop called, as he did his best to avoid the worst of the dragonfly’s bombardment.

Kenva grit her teeth, checking on Ianmus. The mage cast that instant.

A wall of roiling gold shot into the night sky, tearing towards their distant target. It was a large thing — easily fifteen longstrides across. Perfect for blocking the sight of the dragon fly. As the spell hurdled through space, swarming beasts were caught in its net. They punched straight through, screaming in agony as feathers and carapace smoked from the scouring.

They were, however, alive. Ianmus hadn’t lied when he said it would be weaker.

Spotting the approaching threat, the dragonfly lurched diagonally downwards out of its path. Ianmus merely grit his teeth, and the spell curved to chase. The Silver beast went berserk — jolting in a dizzying series of jumps as it sought to avoid the wall of light.

The dragonfly dived down and away from them as Ianmus’s light wall moved to meet it. Kenva’s eyes sharpened. Even with what looked like fifty strides separating the beast and the spell, from her angle they were aligned.

She loosed, the crack of her arrow making a ranger on her right gasp and clutch his ear. Her shot was there in an eyeblink, blanketed in the fury of a typhoon.

A heartbeat after it punched through the wall of light, cutting winds erupted — and an audible roar. She held her breath — and grinned as he saw the skyborn lord plummeting down, the outer half of its left wings in tatters.

She’d been aiming for the joints. All that and it still nearly dodged?

Squashing the warring feelings of dissatisfaction and victory, she drew another arrow and tracked its trajectory — the thing wasn’t dead yet.

Hang on. It was falling towards the inside of the eastern wall, just to the right of the gate. Where Porkchop was.

“Porkchop?”

“Huh? Oh!” he said with vicious glee, watching the beast that had boiled his flesh spiral down towards him.

He backed up a step, claws digging in.

“He’s not going to do what I think he is, right?” Ianmus muttered, eying the sixty stride drop to the city streets below.

“Lot smaller than that cliff,” Kenva muttered.

Porkchop launched from the wall, burying his claws into the dragonfly’s midsection. The beast roared, its tail shimmering as it struck Porkchop again and again.

Kenva just barely made out a squelch as they fell behind a house.

“You okay?”sShe asked tentatively through their communication artefact.

“Much, much better now.” Porkchop grumbled. A moment later she saw him leap upwards, digging the tips of his claws into the gaps between the mason blocks of the city wall as he clambered back to his position.

“That’s ridiculous,” Ianmus replied. “Bloody physical classers.”

Her reply was cut off by a crushing boom far behind her, joined by a rattling hiss. The sheer volume jolted her into action, and she burst across the tower.

A billowing plume of dust waited for her, just inside of the northern wall. The artisans quarters! Something must have gotten inside — a chunk had been taken out of the parpets, and the defenders were scattered.

Yet she saw…nothing — right up until another building collapsed as if an explosion had gone off next to it. More dust billowed, swirling up against…something.

Something large. It surged forward, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake as it pushed deeper into the city. Right towards the central temple that they were using as a field hospital.

Icy shock coursed through her in realisation. She reached for the artefact that linked her to the command line instantly.

“Shit! Ro, something with a camouflage skill just breached the northern wall! It’s going for our wounded!”