The Time Before

Norral : Finishing the job

Chapter 8 : Finishing the job

My frantic warning about the enemy mage fell on deaf ears as the entire team were glued to Karak's body. It slumped to the floor sideways as if he'd simply drank too much liquor.

We all knew we could die, (a fundamental flaw of our human bodies) but years of complete victory had filled us with a complacency that belied the fact that the vast majority of mages weren't on our side. It hadn't mattered though; they weren't on the human's side either. They hid in dark places like worms, lower even than the filth we fought. Either that or they had become Emflikar and therefore no threat to us. The elder’s commands echoed through my mind. No deaths...do you realise the moral boost it would give our enemies!

It took the twin cries of Shannon and Mulim reporting yet another magical assault on the shield to snap me out of my shock, but it also simultaneously made the decision in my head. None of the enemy could survive to tell of this, they all had to die and that included the mage. Surely the elders would understand?

"KEWOR," I yelled, "get them moving. We need to get in range."

The veteran looked up and immediately snapped out of his own shock and began issuing orders, almost idly sending a column of flame screaming towards a small group of soldiers that had peered around some sandbags. I left him in command whilst I quickly turned to Karak's body.

Making sure none of my team were watching I closed my eyes and moved my left wrist slowly in circles. My right hand joined it, twisting over and over in the complicated gesture. A small spark rose up from the body and hovered over it. I chopped my hands down and the spell was completed. A brief flash left nothing but a black marking against the stone as I felt Karak's remaining magical energy augment my own.

It filled me up, threatening to consume me, but then I felt my mind flex and grow to accommodate the extra power. My eyes opened and I was pleased to see everyone was too busy engaging the soldiers to notice what I'd done.

Kewor's orders came back into my awareness.

"…get that shield reinforced. You two, join Mulim and Shannon, it mustn't fail again."

I took over again.

"Good job Kewor, back in formation. We're moving forwards again, no mercy."

My team started moving again, bringing us towards the end of the bridge and the edge of the storm.

"We need to see, get rid of this storm," I commanded. Almost immediately the dust began to die and the Keep rose up out of the cloud. On the ground no men were in sight, although a hail of arrows peppered the shield from the roof of the keep.

"FIREBALL"

I immediately looked up, tracking the burning orb from where it came. He was definitely in the keep. Unusually it dissolved quite a distance before hitting our shield, small sparks floating to the ground. What was he doing?

We carried on forward past the fortifications at the end of the bridge and once again on to solid ground. Suddenly soldiers appeared from everywhere. They jumped up from behind concealed walls, out of covered holes. Cavalry seemed to float out from behind the keep and spearmen appeared behind us. Against equal odds it would have been an impressive ambush, but what were they doing, they'd be killed easily?

If it was possible the deaths came quicker and even more brutal than before. Filled with anger at Karak's death my team caused carnage. Limbs were ripped off the charging horses and riders, ensuring massive pain before their victims lives were promptly ended. Teron was no longer laughing, and his victims no longer ran around on fire. His eyes were hard as he moved from target to target reducing them to ash instantly in an awesome display of focused power.

No more arrows hit the shield as Meine (one of the mages original helping Kewor with the sandstorm) destroyed them in the air long before they got close. If he spotted an archer they quickly found themselves festooned with the contents of their quiver.

Feeling fresh from my power boost I held up both hands and slammed two walls together smashing the men inside. I left it slightly apart, crushing them slowly, painfully, before ending their lives. It always paid to prolong the screams.

Behind me more conventional death occurred. The pike men's weapons flew backwards impaling them grotesquely. The entire squad fell to the ground looking like a huge butchered hedgehog.

I noticed then we were all using too much power; even Shannon holding the shield was throwing out a small angry fireball at anything that moved.

"CALM DOWN, we need power to finish this. Almost time."

The Keep loomed above us, but no more magic issued from it. A grin formed on my face, the mage was hiding. We moved forward, almost within range. Yet more men appeared from around the keep, sword free as they sprinted towards us. Were they just suicidal, how did Hunt get them to throw their lives away so easily?

Embarrassingly I stumbled forward over the armoured leg of a dead soldier. I looked down to reduce the offending obstacle to ash only to see the sparks that had floated down from the failed fireball the mage had sent a few moments earlier. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I didn't have time to tell Shannon or Mulim. My hands moved like a blur as I put as much strength as I dared into a new shield. With not a fraction of a second to spare I cast it to the floor beneath our feet. The ground exploded as the small sparks suddenly blew up. I felt my shield take the force and gritted my teeth as it flowed outwards. The concussion hit the unshielded ground around us sending soil and rocks high into the air obscuring us in a cloud of dirt.

Anger at the mage threatened to consume me; I would see him dead.

"What the hell was that?" Kewor shouted.

"The mage, he's smart," I replied. "We need to take him out now. I've had enough of this. We have the bridge we don't need the Keep. Take it out."

"Are you sure Sir."

"YES, do it NOW before he realises his trick didn't work.

With my orders clear my squad moved efficiently. We were still obscured from view as we began the first gestures of the doom cloud spell. This time I was the centre and I felt the combining of energy the gestures created. Each of my team sent their energy to me, tightly bound for release. I felt the power as it coursed through my body like intoxicating liquor. I could feel it filling every fibre, making the boost from Karak earlier seem a small puddle compared to an ocean. Carefully I shaped it with a new gesture and with some reluctance I pointed at the keep and released the awesome force.

Usually this spell was used over a wide area, like a town. This situation was different. If I used cloud based lightning it would just hit the shield and whilst it would be an interesting experiment to see if the shield could take that much of a pounding I couldn't afford to waste the power.

Instead the alteration I did before releasing it manifested the clouds directly above the keep, but beneath the shield, at the expense of power. The limited diameter of the keep made this loss negligible. With delight I watched as the dust settled around us and a thousand bolts of lightning hammered in to the huge stone blocks.

For a heart-stopping second silence descended as mage and soldier alike stopped and stared, in triumph and horror respectively. Nothing seemed to happen to the keep, but then a low rumbling vibrated out in contrast to the ripping boom of the lightning. With an almighty roar the entire structure exploded outwards. A mushroom cloud shot straight up, and through the top of the shield into the sky.

"BACK UP, LETS GET AWAY," I screamed as I added my strength to the shield.

"EVERYONE REINFORCE THE SHIELD NOW."

I felt the shield swell just in time as a the debris from the explosion engulfed us. Amidst the cloud of rock and dust a huge piece of stone, that dwarfed those the catapults had thrown, shot towards us. With a crack it split in two thanks to the quick thinking of Kewor, but he couldn't stop it all. The remainder smashed into the shield and we all felt the force it hit with. The shield held easily, reinforced by all twelve of us, but we couldn't take many like that. Our retreat became a jerky run as we moved as fast as we could within the confines of the shield. Sweat glistened from Shannon's face, and Mulim looked exhausted. No more large blocks of stone hit, but the sheer quantity of smaller pieces was beginning to tell.

Finally the dust ahead began to thin and we could see ahead. We kept moving, blindly holding on and thinking only of maintaining the shield. We fell through the bridge shield boundary without realising we were there. Our shield dissolved around us on contact as we all hit the ground. I came to my feet immediately and cast a shield around us again, drawing on my extra reserves from Karak's death.