Chapter 628 — Monsters and Machines

Red Maple's city-wide shield closed.

A hazy, thin energy barrier settled over the plains city. Mighty magical power was drawn up from the mana foci beneath the streets, channeled and projected through rune arrays until it hardened into a barrier sturdier than rock—and even as the shield sealed shut, the artillery fire from the plains came raining down upon the city walls.

The piercing shrieks were like a banshee's wail at midnight. Metal warheads trailing pale cyan vapor clouds carved bright arcs through the air and hammered ceaselessly against Red Maple's shield; great sheets of explosion-flash bloomed again and again across its surface like a storm of heavenly fire—the Xuanque city's shield shuddered violently under the impacts, ring after ring of ripples spreading outward from every point of attack, but no matter what, the shield still held, and the Cecilians' first wave was beaten back.

It stood above the city, barring every shell, and a low humming echoed through the outer districts—the sound of the subterranean mana facilities coming fully online.

On the wall, a crystal-cluster commander wore the look of one who had survived a disaster, watching the shield burst into vast sheets of brilliance, and let out a long breath: "Held! We held!"

But Heaton shot the man a glare. "Fool—the battle's only just begun!"

The Dark Hierarch felt no relief at all that Red Maple's shield had stopped the Cecilians' "heavenly fire." On the contrary, he knew this fight had only started—he even knew that the fall of Bedrock Fortress had begun precisely with their city shield stopping the Cecilian assault.

From all he had learned in recent days, he had grasped many of the Southmarch Legion's characteristics. Those devices that hurled explosions and beams were not like traditional magic items: they required no mage to charge them, they ran continuously, and they seemed so cheap to produce that damaged equipment could be replaced and resupplied within a very short time. Their weakness was rigidity—each could cast only a fixed spell—but the Cecilians had made up for that by manufacturing vast numbers of devices of every kind...

Against an enemy like that, the traditional "fortress tactic" was a dead end.

Red Maple's shield had stopped the Cecilians' first assault, and to Heaton its greatest significance was simply this: it had bought him the chance to keep fighting.

"Summon the Godspawn Legion from the south at once—have them come back to relieve Red Maple and strike the Cecilians' rear," Heaton said, turning to an aide. "Tell Krolod to return immediately and break the Cecilian position from the east..."

Heaton rapped out his orders with speed, but before he had finished, several more shrieks—far stranger than the rest—came suddenly from the western sky—

Louder than the ordinary "heavenly fire," laced with a kind of blood-chilling hum. In the instant of his brief astonishment, he sensed that several unusually violent impacts had struck Red Maple's western barrier!!

Boom, boom, boom!!

The shield above the city's western quarter blazed with blinding light, and the whole wall trembled before that tremendous force. And hard on the heels of those blows came a continuous, hair-raising low hum, as though some mighty current of energy were being focused and driven against the western barrier.

It was those warships of the Cecilians!!

They had stolen their way to Red Maple too? When on earth—!

Heaton was shocked and furious, because he remembered perfectly well that when the last intelligence came in, those ships had still been in the Fertile Woodlands. How fast could those vessels sail?!

"Notify Glem at once—have him find some way to stop those ships! Even if he has to stuff his own head into one of their 'magic-cannon'!"

"Yes, sir!"

With the new orders dispatched, Heaton felt not the slightest relief—because he had suddenly realized that this Cecilian army was nothing like what he had imagined.

This was not the kingdom's army, not some noble host of the Eastern Marches. It had no intention of following any rules of war—those war chariots were pressing Red Maple from the front while the shelling from the Gorgon River pounded the western barrier without pause. This simultaneous assault by land and water was a method no one had ever conceived of; it was like a vise tightening, and already it had clamped shut on the Xuanque city's throat.

This was no probing attack. The Cecilians meant to annihilate the Xuanque city outright, and in short order.

...

East of Red Maple, in the Stone City already reduced to ruins, blood had dyed the collapsed walls red.

A day and a night of savage fighting had steeped this ancient city in deep crimson. The knights and soldiers of the Mountain Legion, using what remained of the castle district's walls and the keep, had thrown up a makeshift line and beaten back yet another enemy assault.

Countless twisted, swollen monsters lay dead across the courtyards and stairways of Stone Castle; countless brave and fearless knights had fallen before those ever-tightening lines. Both sides had long since stopped reckoning the cost in casualties—they fought inch by inch over the castle's shrinking ground, and now even the bravest warriors were at the very end of their strength.

The battle cries in the castle district were fading. The surviving soldiers and the last knights held the line at the inner court, backed against the broken walls; inside that tottering perimeter, the mage corps, long since drained of mana, and the archers, out of arrows, had taken up sidearms and readied themselves for the final hand-to-hand. And Victoria, with the last shred of her mana, stood at the center of the inner court, watching the world beyond the walls through a mage's eye.

Countless vast shadows prowled among the shattered walls; the twisted, mutated monsters were regrouping, preparing the next assault—perhaps the last one. And her weary warriors had already reached the limit of what human physiology could bear.

She could even see the monsters' commander, a crystal-cluster creature of uncommon height. It had never once come to the front before, showing the utmost caution and care—but now it had appeared in the castle district, and that was the look of one who knew the game was won.

The monsters had decided that victory was theirs... and the facts seemed to bear them out.

Victoria gripped her platinum staff hard, slowly steadying the disordered currents of her breath left by overcasting, and seized the time to recover what mana she could. She counted how many minutes until the monsters attacked, and how much strength she could gather in those few short minutes.

But all at once, an unexpected commotion spread among the monsters.

Victoria saw the swollen, twisted giants begin to stir uneasily all at once, shoving at one another in the confusion—then, as one, they raised their heads and looked toward something beyond the city. The towering monster, its face twisted with shock and fury (incredible as it seemed, the creatures truly did keep expressions much like a human's), climbed a nearby stretch of wall amid a clutch of its underlings and stared off toward the Gorgon River.

Seconds later, the monsters actually mustered with startling speed and withdrew from the castle district!!

The stir beyond the inner court quickly drew the knights' attention too. A knight on watch in a tower stared in amazement at the movement between the inner court and the outer walls of the fortress, then cried out at the top of his voice: "The monsters are falling back!!"

From another lookout the same cry soon came: "The monsters are falling back—they really are falling back!"

Victoria stepped out from the crowd, somewhat dazed, unable for a moment to grasp what had happened—but in that brief bewilderment, understanding struck her all at once—

Someone was attacking Red Maple!