B4 Chapter 494: Defending the Wall, pt. 3

Kaius watched another man die. It had barely taken an instant. One moment, the man was fifty longstrides down the line from him, just another face holding a spear.

The next a hawk with a wingspan as large as a man’s slammed into his chest. He’d just…fallen; screamed his way down from the wall until he’d hit the street with a wet crack.

Kaius swallowed, driving the image of the man’s flattened skull from his mind. He hadn’t been able to do anything. He could have killed the beast in a single cut, but he couldn’t be everywhere.

All it had taken was a moment of distraction — the militiaman being just a little less braced than his fellows on either side.

Another breath quelled the hole inside of him. Was life really so cheap?

Sliding forwards, he cleaved through a buzzing moth as large as his head. His section of the wall was littered with dead beasts. They just didn’t stop coming — apparently just a little too slow, and a little too bestial to realise his gap in the opening was not a weakness.

It almost made it hard to focus on his true target, the black tide of gnashing teeth that crashed towards the walls.

Just a little further. The Tyrant’s forces were almost at the dragon’s teeth. Damn the monstrosity that led this army, but its tactics had worked. With their archers and mages tied up with the swarming flock above them, the ground forces had been able to advance almost entirely unhindered.

No matter, they would hit the scattered spikes of stone like they were solid walls. As the front collapsed, the charging creatures behind would only drive their vanguard deeper onto the spikes.

It would be a cascade — a teaming mass of uncoordinated flesh. Perfect for a Starfall.

Or seven of them.

It was a barrage that took almost his entire pool of mana to cast. A preparation he had made to break their initial charge. It would leave him vulnerable, limited to using only a fraction of his normal arsenal of spells. There would be little opportunity to sit down and reinscribe during the fight, but it would be worth it.

Kaius fingers twitched as he watched the army, as if he could cut their number down with blade alone. It was a good thing both he and Porkchop had been placed where they were — it was going to be a slaughter, warmagic or no.

The Tyrant’s forces had formed themselves into a great wedge, headed by beasts so large that they might as well have been siege engines unto themselves.

Irontusks, as well as squat armour-plated bull creatures, and more joined a menagerie that formed a hammer. One that would strike directly at the gate.

If he couldn’t break their charge, that was.

His heart thumped heavy in his chest. Either he slaughtered this advance alone, or hundreds of guards would die.

All around him, men fought, desperately doing what they could to fend off the aerial beasts. Constant bombardment may have held the flock at bay, but even injured, each creature that reached the walls was vicious. Even one took multiple guards to take down, rarely without injury.

Kaius had no eyes for their plight, focused so thoroughly on the steady thump of thousands of feet on the earth.

His heart beat, and the army drew closer. They were bare longstrides from the dragon’s teeth.

Every muscle in his body was tense, like a warbow under full draw. H wrapped his Will around seven inscriptions. Each one was a roiling packet of mana forced into false stability; weapons of destruction to the last, they hungered to be set free.

His heart beat again.

Suicidal and rabid, the vanguard rammed the dragon’s teeth. Angled pikes of stone ripped through hide, scale and flesh alike, driving deep. Blood sprayed wide, a terrible baying call of agony filled the night.

Just another moment! He only needed the ranks to buckle!

Yet to his dread, he watched energy flash through the leading ranks of beasts. Bodies toughened, gleaming shields of a dozen affinities snapped into existence, and charging monstrosities accelerated.

Stone broke. Shaped into deadly traps or not, common granite failed in the path of system-backed might. The vanguard’s advance continued, slowed but not broken.

Alarm spiked, a flash of cold that spread down Kaius’s back. He wanted nothing more than to unleash his spells — wipe the threat away.

It would have been folly, he had to wait. Only the first row of teeth had been failed — hundreds more still separated the tyrant’s ground forces from the wall.

Focusing his vision, he watched the vanguard of massive creatures drive themselves deeper onto the spikes, widening their wounds. Blood flowed in a great ocean, a bounty of red that watered the parched ground surrounding the city.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

They were slowing!

Behind the vanguard, momentum and rabid fury drove the remaining forces onwards. They slammed into the back of the front line.

An Irontusk buckled — the unexpected crush driving a stone spike deep into its throat.

Momentum died, leaving only a heaving crowd that desperately jostled towards the city. More were coming. Wide, flanking lines that advanced behind the wedge that raced for the eastern gate, but they too would be slowed. Forced to clamber over obstacles that only the most adroit would be able to ignore, they would be helpless against the archers on the walls.

It was exactly the moment Kaius had been waiting for.