Chapter 140: Meteors Over the Bulwark

Crimson fire swallowed Kael whole.

It swept down from his shoulders over the dragon’s bone-white frame, and the ghostly blue flames that had wreathed the Frost Bone Dragon since its fusion burned red as a forge, every attribute he possessed doubled in the space of a breath.

He drove the reins forward, and the dragon launched itself from the rampart in a plunging dive.

Dragonrush.

Burning wings snapped wide and drove the great creature forward with sudden, brutal acceleration.

It fell across the sky like a crimson meteor and slammed into the Three-Headed Ape-Demon with a shock that echoed across the battlefield. The ape’s whole body jerked, and a spinning mark of dizziness appeared above its heads.

That did not mean it was weak.

The ape was only a summoned creature, a minion drawn out of the dark by Vorlath’s chant, but it was a level 90 Legendary all the same, with attributes to match.

Even in the full flush of Skyborn Awakening, a yawning gulf of power separated it from Kael.

It shook off the daze in half a second.

Then it roared and swung one enormous claw at the dragon.

Kael had watched this thing tear a Dragon Knight’s mount to ribbons moments after it arrived. He was not about to let it do the same to him.

He triggered Spirit Communion without a heartbeat’s delay, copying Stormwing Sovereign’s skill, and fixed his eyes on a patch of open sky.

Stormstep.

Man and dragon dissolved into a single streak of golden lightning and reappeared a hundred meters away. The ape’s claw closed on nothing.

But there was no time to feel relief.

One of the ape’s three heads threw back its jaw and loosed a wild, furious cry, and the air around Kael turned to knives.

His health bar began to fall.

In seconds, almost a third had gone. He felt the blood leave his face.

Three more of those, and I’m finished.

Fortunately, he was no longer fighting alone.

When Thrumgar and Vorlath had arrived, the Bulwark’s reserves had answered.

A company of mages in resplendent robes had climbed onto the highest ramparts, their staves lifted, their voices rising in a chant that seemed to hum in the stone itself.

The Starseers of the Lunarian Empire.

It was the second great empire’s most prestigious force, a small legion, but every one of its members wielded a celestial magic unlike anything else on the continent. Their reputation stood equal to the Solarian Dragon Knights.

Kael watched them go to work.

Some of the seers raised their hands, and the air above them tore open into shining gates, and out of those gates stepped celestial sentinels in gleaming armor, silent and terrible, descending to join the fight.

Others called upon the spirits of the stars themselves, and the light gathered and hardened into plates of living radiance that settled over their bodies, and they leapt from the wall to join the melee. A third group joined hands, and their combined chant swelled into a forbidden spell.

Starfall.

Hundreds of burning meteors came out of the cloud-heavy sky, one after another, and fell across the plain in a storm of fire.

Where they struck, the earth shook and the Hollow Legion’s ranks vanished in blasts of white light and flung debris, the whole front line gutted at once.

One of those meteors struck the Three-Headed Ape-Demon squarely in the back. It shrieked, a bloodcurdling sound, and half its body and one entire head caved in under the blow. Its health bar dropped by more than half in a single stroke.

Two Imperial defenders at level 80 and above closed in, along with a Solarian Dragon Knight, and the ape was dragged into a desperate fight.

Kael watched the titans clash from a respectful distance.

Let the giants have each other.

He wheeled the dragon away and dove at the climbing swarms on the wall instead.

Glacial Breath.

A river of frost poured out of the dragon’s open jaws and washed over the undead clawing up the stone.

They turned to dust where they hung and tumbled in a rattling cascade down into the snow.

A level 90 boss was beyond him, but the common soldiers of the dead were another matter, and he swept them off the wall by the hundred.

Every piece of equipment he wore carried some measure of lifesteal, and the damage he had taken from the ape’s winds flowed back into him with each kill until his health bar was full again.

Then he pulled the reins and flew back to the place where Elara stood.

The Frostbound Throne’s quest still glowed at the top of his log, and nothing else mattered more. He settled his mount beside her, and from his inventory he drew a magnificent longbow of Legendary make.

Standing in the saddle, he began to loose arrows in a rapid, ruthless stream, cutting down the monsters that approached her section of the wall.

The battle surged on.

The Hollow Legion had brought three of the Ten Great Bosses against the Bulwark in a single morning, and the human defense was strained to its limit.

But the wall was a thing built over thousands of years, and it did not yield.

The great arrays and mechanisms woven into its stone woke one after another, the formations of every human nation blazing in their turn, sweeping the climbing dead from the outer face and breaking wave after wave before it could crest.

Isolde the Frostblade held the center. The Dragon Knights and the Starseers flanked her. The line was bending, but it held.

For every player on the field, it was the greatest point-harvest the game had ever offered.

The golden ranking hung in the sky and flickered ceaselessly, names rising and falling, scores climbing in a blur.

At the very top, one name had not moved since the first hour.

Kael’s damage had risen noticeably since Valen joined the roster. Even monsters above level 60 fell to his arrows with ease.

All the experience he earned flowed out to his companions, who glowed over and over with the gold of new levels.

None of them had awakened a new skill. The Genesis Heart’s talents were chance, and chance had given him enough for one morning.

Time slipped past. More than an hour had gone by since the assault began, and still the battle held at its knife’s edge.

Then, in the high sky above the wall, something shifted.

Thrumgar roared and leaped.

The troll’s colossal body rose into the air with astonishing speed, one great hand outstretched, and caught the golden tail of the Imperial Dragon Knight’s sovereign mount.

He hauled it out of the sky and slammed it into the ground, and the whole world shook.

The golden dragon screamed and loosed a blast of fire that struck the troll full in the chest and wrists. The shock of it forced his hand open. The dragon beat its wings, rising, trying to escape.

The ground beneath it split.

From the broken earth, thick red vines burst out, writhing like pythons, and lashed around the dragon’s body in coil after coil.

Thorns as long as daggers studded every length, and they bit deep, piercing even the hard golden scales.

In seconds, a great tangled net of thorn and blood covered the beast, and the more it thrashed, the tighter it drew.