B4 Chapter 495: Defending the Wall, Finale

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.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

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.