Spear of Destiny: Chapter 26

Author's Note: The version you guys are reading here is still subject to edits/changes as we build into the final stages of production and publication. I encourage all of you to submit major editing issues to me in the comments, or by PM here or on the Archemi Discord server. I definitely want to hear your feedback and catch any plot/characterization mistakes.

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A helpless grin split my face as I plummeted down, the wind tearing at my limbs. The cloud layer parted around me as I free-fell toward the dark ground. With the ambient light reflected from the clouds, my eyes were keen enough that I could see people even from this height, moving around like ants on the walls and between doors on the Lower Ward. The Upper Ward was almost lifeless, save for an idle group of guards around a small fire. Their 'camp' was contained within a semi-circle of spikes that surrounded the door to the Keep. I used the time dilation of Leap of Faith to rapidly tag moving objects in my HUD, along with the small airship idling behind the building.

"Ten guards: four in front of the Keep, one at each stairwell, four patrolling the walls." I yanked the ripcord and held on as the chute blew out into the air above me. "Let's both land on the ramparts and take out those patrols. Then we can make some new friends."

"Yeah! I love making friends!" Looking back and up, I saw Karalti's chute deploy, the dull grey silk nearly invisible against the leaden sky.

The guards were carrying torches, moving in pairs as they patrolled the ramparts ringing the Upper Ward, all of them oblivious to the death descending on them from on high. I kept an eye on the altitude. Three hundred, two hundred, one hundred, fifty. I cut my lines then, dropping like a stone.

The poor bastards had no idea what hit them. I landed on the first guard like a pogo stick rider, driving the Spear and the full weight of my body down into his torso. The blade plunged between his neck and his breastplate, dealing catastrophic damage. I vaulted off him and took out the second guard with a lance to the throat. He sunk to his knees, gurgling as he clawed at his neck.

[You deal a mortal blow! You deal a mortal blow! 64 EXP!]

On the other side of the wall, I saw Karalti descend in an arc of rippling silk. The torches of the guards there fell and winked out.

"Two ex-guards, served over ice!" Karalti chirped.

"Good work. Now for the ones at the stairwells."I turned back to the pair of corpses, equipped the spellglove I kept in my inventory, and tuned into my one and only magical ability: Shadow of the Sun, the vampiric spell that allowed me to raise shadows from the dead.

"Sond, Karalt', Bi'nah!" Mana pulsed through the glove, sliding out into the air as wispy tendrils of Dark energy, as fine as spider silk. A frigid chill flowed down the rampart, whispering, as the light around us guttered and the darkness plunged into both of the deceased guards. Their shadows trembled, then came together into a pair of vaguely humanoid forms, pikes in hand.

Common Shadow Soldier

Unit Rank 0 (Level 12, Common)

Type: Incorporeal Undead

HP: 400/400

Speed: 110 (Extremely Fast)

Melee Attack: 90

Melee Defense: 8

Abilities: Lift Drain, Incorporeal, Sneak Attack (x3 damage)

EXP: 1200 (+400 to next level)

"Kill the men who guard the entry to the Lower Ward stairs," I ordered. "And make it fast."

The shades saluted, then warped into the shadows of the rampart and flowed along it, heading for the gates.

"Ready?" I thought back to Karalti.

"Ready!" My dragon leaped silently to the edge of the rampart on the other side of the courtyard. I climbed up to mirror her position, crouching, and messaged Suri and Rin. "We've made contact. Ready Wave One."

"Roger, arriving in five," Suri replied crisply.

I tensed, ready to jump, when a blood-curdling scream rang out from the stairwell. I whipped my head around to see the pair of shadows attacking only one of the guards, not both of them at the same time.

"FUCK!" I sprung out from the wall, hit the ground in a roll, and kept running. "Karalti, help the shades kill that other guy! Lock the gates!"

The four guards in front of the Keep mobilized immediately. Two of them ran out into the open, calling to their comrades. One stood frozen, clutching his spear and scanning the darkness. One ran to a big iron bell and started to ram it with the butt of his polearm.

"Fuck fuck fuck." I Jumped into the air, sailing over the spikes, and landed on the pair like a thunderbolt. Umbra Burst sprayed thorny spines of darkness in all directions, impaling the men and freezing them, but it was too late. Lights were blazing to life inside the Keep. I could hear feet thundering down the stairwells.

"The dead are here! The undead demons!" I heard a Vlachian voice shout from behind me.

Whirling, I spotted Karalti battling the pair who'd run from the Keep, and behind them, the first wave of paratroopers descending from the sky. The Yanik were heading right toward us from the Lockhart with Zlaslo in the lead, and the first wave of Meewfolk right behind them.

"Okay, first Shadowlord lesson: Lesser undead are really fucking stupid." I grit my teeth and cast my hand over the two men I'd just killed. "Sond, karalt', binah!"

The new shadows rose, waiting patiently for orders. I was about to issue them when a thump from behind the doors of the Keep startled me. No one emerged. Instead, there were more thumps, the sound of heavy objects being dragged across the floor. They were barricading themselves inside.

"Fucking bullshit mother-fucking-" I swore to myself, and split for the stairwells with the shadows in tow. It was too late to stop the defenders inside the keep from bracing the door. The fight outside was about to get rolling.

I sprinted, then dashed forward in a comet of black fire, smashing into the back of the guard dueling Karalti, and freeing her up to run to the far stairwell. I ran to the closer one, slamming the gate closed and locking the bolt across. As I did, a larger claxon rang out - from the guard tower in the Lower Ward.

The doors of the Great Hall behind us burst open, letting out a flood of sleepy, startled warriors. They were caught completely flat-foot as five, ten, twenty Yanik descended from the sky on top of them. Cast-off parachutes draped over the shouting, confused rebels, covering them like funeral shrouds as the Yanik turned on them with blade and bow and hacked them to pieces. The alarm rang continuously from below us – the sound of the castle bell joined by the hellish air-raid siren battlecries of a hundred pissed off giant cats.

"Form up! Form-HHRRGH!" I heard someone in Zoltan's ranks shout, then gurgle as Yanik steel found his belly.

The Great Hall was a makeshift barracks for at least a hundred men. Rebels spilled out of the great hall in knots and ran straight into the silk-draped corpses of their friends, tripping over them in the dark as Zlazlo shouted at his men to line up and pull their bows. Arrows clattered off wood and steel and sunk into flesh as the Rangers drew and fired, drew and fired, raining wood and steel on the terrified, half-dressed brigands. Men screamed as they fell, or snarled curses as they turned and tried to flee, stumbling back toward the building where the enemy was hastily lining up with bows and rifles. I shadow danced through the hail of missiles and jumped straight up. Shards of brilliant black energy gathered around me like a forest of spears, then shot down at the enemy archers. The line of twelve at the front danced jerkily as the shards impaled them, rematerialized in the air, and rained down on the increasingly panicked, desperate ranks behind them.

"I am Voivode Dragozin Hector! The House of Hussar is assuming control of this castle!" I shouted. "Surrender and live, or fight and die!"

"Surrender! For the Nine's sake, brothers!" Cries started to ring through the hall. The fifty or so remaining soldiers, most of them still half-dressed, dropped their weapons and went to their knees.

The Yanik advanced behind me, arrows nocked to their bowstrings. Zlazlo held up a warding hand to them as he jogged forward. He’d been slashed across the face, blood pouring down his cheek and throat into the collar of his armor.

“Got a potion for that?” I asked him, jerking my chin toward him. “That’s a nasty cut.”

“Keh?” Zlaslo, slightly dazed from his combat high, hadn’t even felt the injury. He touched his face, then grunted. “Oh, this. Is fine. I will treat it later. What is your orders?”

“We secure these idiots and move on to the Keep.” I squeezed his shoulder and turned back to our new captives. "Who's in charge here”

"Me! I am!" A burly, grizzled older man spoke up from the ground about twenty feet from me.

"Name and rank!" I barked.

He winced at the sound of my voice, holding up his half-laced breeches with one hand. "Captain! Captain Horna!"

"Captain Horna, your ass is on the line. Barricade this door and remain inside. Treat your wounded as you can. We're here for Zoltan. If anyone in here steps outside this hall, we'll kill you and burn this place to the ground with dragonfire. Am I understood?"

"Yes! Yes, my lord." He scrambled up, casting a look back at his shocked and bloody men. “All of you hear that? If I see any hands on weapons, I’m throwing you out of here to meet the Maker!”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. "Zlaslo, get your men to the wall and provide ranged support for Taethawn."

"Yes sir!" Zlaslo whirled around and swept his arms up and forward. The Yanik ran back, covering me in formation as I sprinted back outside.

"Karalti! Where are you?" I called to her as we broke back out into the open. The fighting in the upper ward was already over, the ground littered with the bodies of the dead and dying.

"I'm fine! I'm on the wall!" She replied. "I've got a rifle and I'm shooting people trying to come up the stairs!"

"Come back down. I'm need you." I opened my group PM with Suri and Rin. "Suri, what's your status?"

She replied after a couple seconds. "Great. It's a real brawl down here."

“Stay safe.” I cut the message, watching as Captain Horna and his soldiers closed the entry to the Great Hall. A handful of Rangers whooped victoriously, letting out the roars, shrieks, and barking cries of their totemic dinosaurs as they jammed a bundle of spears into the handles of the doors to bar them from the outside.

With that taken care of, I planted my feet and surveyed the Keep. Every interior light was ablaze, the windows full of scurrying shadows. Zoltan faced three options in this situation: try and escape, surrender, or turtle up and attempt to fight us to the death. He'd apparently chosen option three. If my troops tried to take the Keep now, it would be a tragic, messy waste of life.

Fortunately for me, there were about sixty dead rebels strewn all over the courtyard. And I was a motherfucking Shadowlord.

I drove the butt end of the spear against the ground, drew a deep breath, and focused on the dark, grinning spark of magic in my chest. "Sond, Karalt', Bi'nah!"

One by one, the shadows of Zoltan's dead men peeled themselves up from their corpses, until a field of no fewer than thirty simmering pillars of shadow stood in the courtyard, eerily still.

"Go to the Keep, all of you!" I took the Spear and gestured toward the building. "Minimize casualties, maximize chaos! Spare non-combatants! Kill any hostile mages!"

The shadow soldiers turned and poured toward the barricaded door. Thumps were still coming from behind it as Zoltan's men piled furniture into the entryway... sounds interrupted by hoarse shouts of terror as the shades simply phased through the barricade and fell on the men inside. I leaned on the Spear, eyes screwed shut in concentration, and gripped it to steady myself as my awareness traveled with the shadows into the keep. I sensed them pursuing the fleeing soldiers, cutting down just enough of them to make a point - and more importantly, to clear the hall so that we could bust in the door.

"Hector!" Karalti ran up to me, panting and streaked with gore. She was still clutching her borrowed rifle. "Things are crazy in the Lower Ward! The Orphans are doing well, but I don't know how long that'll last. The guards are starting to organize, and there's a lot of them."

"We're about to fix that." I stared ahead at the Keep as screams tore through the air. "First we need to bolster our troops in the lower ward, and then we need to bust in that door.”

“Just as well that I’m the best at breaking things!”Karalti took several bounding steps back from me, unequipped her gear, and spread her arms wide. Mana swirled up into a coil of blue-black scales and the courtyard was plunged into shade as Karalti stretched her wings, inflated her throat, and bellowed a long, deep, guttural roar toward the Keep.

"Head up onto the wall. We need to keep a low profile: no flying around the outside of the towers. They've got their cannons pointed out toward the city, not in toward the keep.” I vaulted up to Karalti's back, landing in a crouch on the saddle. “Let's try your Queensong to back up our troops, and then you and I are breaking up Zoltan’s bedroom party.”

Karalti replied by climbing up onto the ramparts, keeping her wings spread to reduce her weight and not crush the bricks into powder. The battle below raged like a storm: in the nexus of the whirling steel and screams was Suri, a flow of pure violence as she cut down men with her axes. Kitti and her men were guarding her back, the young Berserker dueling a cluster of pikemen trying to break through Letho and Gruna’s crossbow barrage. Not far from them, I saw Taethawn fighting with all four limbs – the scimitars in his hands and the bonded metal claw sheathes on his feet - as sword blows glanced off his armor and a gleaming blue barrier of magical energy. A rebel rushed him, only to have his throat torn out as the commander spun into a graceful cartwheel. He threw the body into the next man over before landing and rushed him, plunging both swords into his chest from either side. Karalti was right: we were mowing down the first wave of soldiers, the ones who’d stumbled out unprepared and half-witted, but their deaths were allowing the second wave to ready themselves – and they were circling from the outside with shields and spears.

Karalti leaned out over the edge of the wall and roared again. The effect was immediate: half a dozen less experienced rebels fell beneath swords and claws as the sight of the dragon distracted them. But she was just warming up: Her jaws gaped, and I felt her draw a deep breath, arming some deep inner power.

[Karalti uses Queensong!]

A dark nimbus formed around us both, crackling with bright seams of color... and then she emitted a primordial, bone-shuddering bass rumble. It sounded like a stampede of horses, getting louder and louder until suddenly the muscles of her neck squeezed and a clear, high, piercing whistle of pure soprano joined the bass and drowned out almost every other sound in the castle. It spread from her like a shockwave, and as it washed over the stunned, brawling mob, Zoltan's troops crumbled. A full hundred of his men stumbled to their knees, vomiting helplessly onto the flagstones, while others tried to flee in terror and impaled themselves on the waiting sabers of the Orphans Company.

“RRRRRHHHHOOOOOOOO!“ Tail and wings vibrating, Karalti built into her throat singing like an earthquake, the upper note now as clear and pure as glass. I was rooted to the spot on her back, barely able to breathe as waves of what could only be raw magic passed over me. Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Karalti relaxed her throat, and the overnote faded back into a deep rolling growl, like the rattling of a huge raven.

"Holy tits." I gasped, clutching to the saddle like a life raft. As the last wave of resonance passed over me, it left me with fresh energy, a sense of vigor so powerful I felt manic. "WOO!"

"Yeah! Take that!" Karalti spat a gout of fire into a unit of spearmen, scattering them, then turned around and used her wings to climb back down into the Upper Ward. "Need me to break open that door?"

"No one looks like they're surrendering." I thumped the top of my helmet with a fist. "Let's get some!"

Karalti tossed her head, then stood up and broke into a lumbering charge toward the keep. She bought her shoulders down and compressed her neck into a straight line, and then rammed the bony plate at the base of her horns right into the door. Wood splintered and groaned, but the doors held.

"This asshole isn’t worth breaking your neck over. Just torch the damn thing." I knelt up again, watching the windows and arrow slits. The sound of fighting was still coming from inside: when I checked the Mass Combat menu, I saw that I'd lost thirty of the fifty-four shadow units I'd animated. Someone was using magic.

"No, we can't risk setting the keep on fire! Use your freezy-jumpy move on it!" Karalti shook her head, snorting, and backed up for another charge. "Uhhhh... what's it called... Shattering Darkness! And make the Spear Dark-element! It’ll do some bonus cold damage, and weaken the door!"

I jumped off her and sped to the ground, dashing forward just before I hit dirt. The Spear of Nine Spheres burned with a brilliant deep indigo, coils of dark energy building up around my arm and the haft of the weapon as I roared and plunged the blade deep into the shattered oak.

[You deal 628 Darkness damage to door! -15% Damage Reduction!]

The wood buckled and squealed as it froze solid. Frost and cracks bloomed over it, spreading as I backpedaled and made room for Karalti. She pawed the ground with a back foot, and then charged the door a second time. She smashed into it with the full force of her ten-ton terrestrial weight, and the frozen wood exploded around her head and caved into the hall beyond.

"Ugh." My dragon shook head as she pulled it free of the wreckage. "I need to pay more attention to Vash's khiig-channeling lessons."

"You alright?" I looked back at her.

"I'm fine! I hit my head harder than that all the time. You know, doing... uhh... dragon stuff." She cocked her head at me, her eyes a little unfocused. “I’ll go and try and stop the fighting, force the soldiers to surrender.”

“Go. Just watch out for artillery.” A nasty acid burning sensation churned at the back of my throat at the thought of what mortar shells could do to a dragon. “Artillery and Ix’tamo.”

“I will. I’ll be fine. Go get Zoltan!” Karalti rumbled, then pivoted and stalked back toward the wall, broadcasting her telepathy across the battlefield. “Guess what, fuckers?! It’s dragon time!”