Chapter 100: Final Raid I

Just as the eight-eyed demon swallowed the last piece of a soldier in front of Aldric’s bloodshot eyes, still crawling through the pool, a shout rang out across the square.

A giant of a woman had appeared at the mouth of one of the streets, in full white armour, a great shield in one hand and a flail in the other.

She raised the flail.

"NOW!"

From every corner of the surrounding streets came more tanks first, built like her, heavy armour and high shields. Behind them came the melee damage dealers. Then the back line, archers, mages and healers mixed together.

They had decided on it during all that time. Better to kill the demon here and now than to abandon the city and cross the swarms with civilians on their backs.

So they had split their forces. The bulk would come and run the raid, while the rest stayed behind to defend the civilians sheltered in the undercity, using the tunnels to keep them out of reach of the flying abominations.

The demon straightened up.

It watched them swarm around it like ants, its eight eyes spreading out across the streets without any hurry, and it gave them no more attention than that.

Since it let them work, the formation came together without trouble.

The tanks closed the ring first, shields locked into one another, a solid line that sealed off every side at once and planted itself into the ground.

Behind them, the mages laid down the bindings.

Iron chains burst up from the cobblestones and climbed its legs. Roots split the stone and wound themselves several times around its ankles. Three mages kneeling in a triangle called up rings of fire that closed tight around the base of its wings.

Each one burned itself into runes on its skin where it touched, and the runes stayed.

It finally moved.

It turned its head toward its own shoulder, looked at the marks forming there, and pulled against one arm.

The chain snapped clean.

The arm came up and a shield slammed against it before the motion was finished, driving it back against its flank. Two tanks threw their full weight into it at once and held it there.

"Barely out and you humans are already trying to bind me—"

The water cut the sentence off.

It rose from the whole square at once, ran across the cobblestones, climbed its body and gathered around its head before closing over it. It took its mouth, its nose, its throat, and went in while it was still speaking.

Its jaw opened under the water and shut on nothing.

Both its hands went for its face. The chains caught them halfway, the tanks leaned in, and they never made it up.

Then the damage dealers came in.

They went between the tanks’ legs, under the pinned arms, through the gaps the line opened and closed for them. The swordsmen cut whatever they could reach, the flanks, the inside of the thighs, the joints of the wings, and were out again before it could turn.

Another was already going in while the first pulled back.

The volleys fell from the back line at the same rhythm, without a pause, in waves that broke over it from all four sides and went straight through. Fire, ice, stone, all of it at once.

The demon took every bit of it standing.

It reared once, wings straining against the rings, and the shield wall gave a pace before holding.

It threw a knee out and swept two tanks off their feet, sending them rolling back across the cobblestones, but two others had already filled their places in the ring before it could push into the gap.

And the water didn’t let go.

Its chest began to hollow in sharp jerks.

In the space all of that opened up, the healers ran to Paydragon.

He had no interest in any of it, driven by a rage he had never known before.

He was still crawling, teeth clenched hard enough to break his own jaw, pulling himself forward one arm after the other.

Green light flared around his body the moment they reached him.

"Keep the heals up!"

One healer rolled him over by force and pinned him on his back with both hands while he fought them, trying to get himself face down again.

Then they saw the armour.

The breastplate was caved in across his side and stomach, driven so deep into the flesh that there was no telling where the metal ended.

Their faces went white.

"By Gaïra. How is he even alive."

"I don’t know. But the heals won’t take until we get that off him."

They all nodded around him.

Blades came out, slid into the gaps in the plate, and they began cutting the armour away piece by piece.

Every plate they pulled free took flesh with it. Blood came off him in waves across the cobblestones while they worked, and the healing spells never stopped, two healers on the wound, a third on his heart.

Aldric didn’t cry out once.

While the healers carried on with their work, a wave of black magic poured out around the demon.

It left it in a ring, low along the ground, lifting the cobblestones as it went.

The shock caught the tanks full on. The whole line gave at once, boots scraping the stone, and behind them the kneeling mages went over backwards, the rings of fire breaking apart between their hands.

The bindings slackened.

That was enough.

The demon snapped the chain on its right arm, tore it out of the ground with a chunk of cobblestone still hanging off the end, and the arm came up.

A swordsman was already charging, airborne, both blades above his head.

The demon’s hand closed around his skull mid-flight and stopped him dead.

It burst.

The body dropped lifeless onto the stones, and in that same instant the water around its head collapsed to the ground with a heavy flat sound.

It stood there a moment, head down, and breathed.

Once. Then a second time, long, all the way to the bottom.

Its eight eyes, which had drifted apart under the water, settled back into place one by one and opened together.

The woman in white turned and shouted.

"Mages, get the chains back up, now! We can’t let it get free!"

But she saw why the water had fallen. Why the temporary bindings, the fire ones, had gone out.

The mages were on their knees, shaking, eyes empty, hands open on nothing. One of them was still trying to shape something between his fingers and getting nowhere.

The wave hadn’t simply knocked them down.

"Damn it! That was a fear effect! The mages are out!"

She took her shield in both hands and planted herself back in the ring.

"TANKS! We buy time until they come back to themselves!"

The line closed up.

They threw everything they had at it.

One of them struck the ground with the flat of his shield and a shock ran out beneath the demon’s feet, taking its footing for a second. Another jammed his knee against its own and hung on with all his weight, dragged two paces without letting go. A third dropped a binding of light around its left wrist, weak enough that it gave almost at once, but those were seconds bought.

The demon’s free arm went for the chain on its other hand.

"HERE!"

A tank stepped out of the line, struck his shield three times and roared over everything else.

"TAUNT!"

Something pulled.

The arm changed direction mid-swing and came down on the shield instead of the chain.

The man went back across the entire width of the square, rolled over the stones and came to rest against an overturned stall. Two hands took him under the arms and dragged him out of the ring before he had finished sliding.

Another had already taken his place.

"TAUNT!"

The demon turned toward that one.

Two more seconds.

It hit him as well, and he went out the other way.

"TAUNT!"

A third.

They were passing it between them. Each one took a hit, got pulled clear, and the next took the attention back before it could return to the chain. Behind the line, bodies were dragged back, hands went on them, green light rose, and some of them went back into the ring before the pain had even passed.

The demon understood.

Its eight eyes went around the ring, one at a time, and it stopped following the taunts.

Then it swung its free arm across and swept the entire line in a single motion. The tanks went back together, shields out in front, scraping several paces across the stone.

The ring broke open.

And nothing at all stood between its hand and the last chain.

Its fingers closed around it.

BOOM—

A blast of fire took it full in the chest and sent it back a step, the chain slipping out of its grip.

Then a second.

Then everything came at once.

The mages were back on their feet, and nothing else existed for them.

The spells left the back line by the dozen, with no coordination, no rotation, each of them emptying everything they had as fast as they could cast it.

Ice lances went through it and buried themselves in the façades behind. Columns of flame rose from the ground beneath it and took it from below, one after another, climbing its legs. Whole slabs of the square’s stone tore loose and struck it in the flanks, from the left then from the right, never letting it come down straight.

Bolts of light fell from the sky in clusters, so tight that no gap remained between them.

It wasn’t touching the ground anymore. Every impact lifted it before it could land.

The air became impossible to breathe. The upper windows blew out one after another all the way around the square. The tanks had dropped to one knee and raised their shields over their heads to shelter from their own side.

Some of them ran to Paydragon and planted themselves in a circle around the healers, shields up, to cover them until it passed.

And it didn’t stop.

One mage went down, emptied out, and another stepped in and carried on where he had left off.

It went on, and on, until the entire square disappeared.

Then the silence dropped all at once.

There was nothing left but the sound of a few stones finishing their roll somewhere, and the breathing of thirty people.

A thick fog had formed over the whole centre, dust and steam and smoke mixed together, and it climbed higher than the rooftops.

Nobody could see a thing.

Nobody moved.