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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.34 (149)
🕑 Added 2024-04-09 22:30:01 +0000 UTCCaptain Angelton ran a critical eye over his troops preparations. He knew most of these men and women were hunters, having spent years honing their skills to primarily kill monsters and beasts. Their only experience fighting in a battle of any significant size would be if they were actually facing a beast tide. Unfortunately, even those battles were fought at distance and under the relative safety of the city’s walls. These elites just didn’t have the background to deal with the sentient foes currently heading their way… and it showed.
“Post!” he shouted, signaling the sergeants to raise the shield layer and receive the kobald’s charge.
Glancing to his left, he saw Specialist Howard anchoring another spell shield for his personal protection. The man’s eyes were closed while he concentrated on his duties, but Angelton could see the slightest hint of smirk on his lips. ‘At least I have a competant war-mage. If it comes to it, he might be able to cover our retreat,’ he thought critically.
Feeling a response to the emergency signal he’d sent to command, he mentally reached out through the communication crystal residing in the pouch on his hip.
Angelton felt the connection open, and he heard an annoyed voice immediately start talking, “Survey Team #24, if you’re attempting to report the successful activation of your base camp, then you’re on the wrong frequency. This connection is only to be used for emergencies. I suggest you -”
Angelton’s stern voice cut the technician off, “S.T. 24 reporting contact with a significant enemy force. We need reinforcements and mages to provide real-time intelligence. Our location is at the proposed site of our base-camp, but they attacked before our defenses were finished. Currently we are in melee with their forces relying on skirmish shields and a singular war-mage for aerial control. Ranged spells are in play, but no tactical magic has been used at this time.”
This wasn’t the first time Angelton has had to deal with this kind of thing. It was both a blessing and curse to have such ironclad control over his essence field. Very rarely could anyone get a read on his emotions, and over a connection-link it was practically impossible. The technician clearly wasn’t expecting an emergency when he felt the connection request, which explained why he hadn’t immediately answered the emergency signal. ‘Our forces are out of practice, and totally unprepared for what we’re facing,’ he bitterly thought to himself.
Unsurprisingly, he felt the shocked technician being replaced on the other end. The new mind seemed much calmer and significantly more powerful. Before long, he heard a strong feminine voice come through the crystal. “S.T. 24, relay composition of enemy forces, and provide a situation update,” she ordered.
Captain Angelton watched as the elites butchered the first wave of kobalds without mercy. He offered them a firm nod of appreciation even though they couldn’t see it. Closing his eyes, he isolated the memory Specialist Howard had shown him, then sent it through the communication crystal toward command.
“Our initial sighting showed a relatively small force, but there is a tunnel supplying them reinforcements from underground. Enemy numbers are unknown, but visual confirmation confirms at least over 500. Enemy units include mages, shamans, battle-leaders, and grunts. Possibly there are additional units that remain unidentified. Battle is currently at the melee stage, no tactical spells or summons in sight. How long until we can get some support?” he asked, the entire time keeping his voice steady.
Command replied immediately, “4 hours minimum. There is no point sending fire-teams individually, we’ll have to gather a significant force before they head toward your position. Units are already being called in, and they’ll be heading your way in an hour at the earliest. Even at best speed, it will still take some time before they can get to where you are. I’m sorry captain, but you’re on your own for now. If you can, maintain this connection and report any and all intelligence that you can gather. You are the first survey team to encounter a unified response to our presence in the mountains, and information you can give us is crucial to our ongoing strategic planning efforts.”
Captain Angelton’s visage almost cracked, a hint of a frown nearly showing on his face. “You should know that this attack was preceded by one of our soldiers accidentally breaching the illusion hiding their forces with his perception field. The moment they were seen, they started their attack. I’m not sure if they were actually planning to ambush us, or if they even intended to attack us at all. It’s entirely possible that more kobald troops and tunnels are currently hidden behind similar illusions. Point of fact, not even our war-mage was able to break their illusion, so I can’t offer any suggestions on how command should proceed.”
The communication crystal stayed silent for more than a few seconds, and Captain Angelton’s attention returned to the battle going on around him. He made his way up and down the lines, observing the elites diligently maintaining the line. The choice to place the encampment at the top of a plateau was a good one. It was also lucky that they’d had enough time to clear so much of the surrounding forest. The sight lines were good, and the open space forced the enemy’s ranged forces to attack from quite the distance. ‘Plenty of space to see what we’re up against,’ he thought to himself.
The communication crystal came alive again, and he heard the impatient voice on the other end say, “The surveillance mages are saying that they don’t see anything to corroborate your theory. They want to talk to the soldier who breached the illusion. You can connect him to the communication crystal and we’ll link it to the Mage Tower on our end.”
The captain paused his steps in surprise. The sounds of battle faded into the background as he turned around to look for Walker. Several teams over, he could see the young man cutting down a kobald and dismissively tossing the body behind him. The young lord’s skill at using a sword and shield was better than he thought it would be.
Weighing the pros and cons of pulling the young man off the line, he decided against it. From what Walker had said, he wasn’t able to explain how he did it, and it would be a waste of time to have him try. Besides, they were currently in the middle of a battle, and the young man was of more use killing kobalds then having an argument with mages who have been increasingly useless… in his opinion at least.
“The soldier in question is currently locked in combat. If the mages want to speak with him, you’ll have to come get us. I’ll be sure to let you know if anything changes with our situation, but I have a battle to fight. S.T. 24 out,” he said, then pushed the connection to the back of his mind.
‘Hopefully, whatever intelligence they think Walker has is important enough to warrant some extraordinary measures,’ he thought, while looking out into the distance and seeing the never-ending line of grunts stumbling up the hill to their deaths. ‘We’re probably going to need it.’
-----
For the most part, Nero’s attention remained evenly split between whatever enemy was directly in front of him and the mental probe he was using to monitor the battle. The fights themselves weren’t all that difficult, and the effort to maintain his mental probe was almost non-existent. Luckily, his efforts with the mental probe proved far more interesting than his fights with the stupidly rabid lizard-children.
At first, he tried focusing on what the kobalds were doing, but there really wasn’t much to see. Within his perception range, he was limited to the open space between him and the tree-line, and that was completely filled with kobalds falling over themselves to get to the top of the hill and swing whatever pathetic excuse for a weapon they had at the first human they saw. Even the kobald mages had retreated behind the trees after they’d dealt with Specialist Howard’s ‘fire-whippy-ball-thing’, or whatever the hell that spell was called.
In Nero’s experience, spell-form naming conventions tended to be rather literal.
Regardless, eventually he started observing how the rest of the elites were fighting. He was able to see numerous basic skills at play, but mostly they were confining themselves to basic weapon forms. He supposed it made sense, it would be idiotic to tire themselves out by wasting center when they didn’t have to.
As the battle wore on, he ended up focusing on what Specialist Howard was doing. That was when he hit pay-dirt. It took a while to filter through everything that he was seeing, but eventually Nero realized how much the man was actually doing.
All of the shields that were hovering above the soldiers, every one of them was being supported by a single spell. Somehow the man had created a static area of essence in the ethereal plane, and then built a framework to hold the shields in the air. That one spell was holding back hundreds of arrows, tens of spells, and whatever else the enemy was throwing at them. It was incredible.
Nero had no idea how Howard was doing it. If he hadn’t noticed the very slight connection leading back to the man’s center, he would never have realized the man was responsible for the spell at all. After adding it to the list of things he would eventually get around to learning, he turned his attention to what the man was casting.
From what Nero could tell, Specialist Howard was standing under a large bubble shield, similarly tied to the ether, but possibly powered by his center. The man’s eyes were closed, and his hands were at his sides, palms facing forward while his fingers danced around crazily. Nero could see several strings of essence connecting his fingers to hovering spell forms floating above his shield, while some flew off into the distance.
Like charging turrets, the spell-forms hovering in the air would slowly build up essence until they reached critical mass. When ready, they would launch balls of green fire into the air, off into the tree line. During their flight, smaller balls of fire would reign down onto the charging kobalds, exploding into glorious displays of destruction like a bomber strafing the battle-field.
Nero studied the spell carefully, but at this distance he couldn’t get a picture clear enough to fully copy the spell-form. While he was able to get the general idea, the part that actually controlled how the spell would charge, then fire, was complete gibberish to him. Although he really wanted to head over to the man to get and take a closer look, he knew now wasn’t the time.
In addition to his ranged bombardment, Specialist Howard was also disrupting the ambient ether somehow while combating the enemy’s magic. When the kobald casters launched their own spells, one of the strings from Howard’s hands would lock onto the spell and slowly corrupt it while it was still in flight. By the time their spells hit the shields, they were barely holding themselves together.
Nero thought he figured out how the man was doing it, but until he had a chance to try it, he couldn’t be sure.
Occasionally, Howard would change out the hovering spells, and Nero would do everything he could to memorize what the man was doing. To Nero, seeing such interesting magic was completely worth the threat of being eaten alive by kobalds… or at least that’s what he told himself.
As Nero was going through the motions, killing kobalds left and right, he imagined what it would look like to have lines of mages casting spells into the air like Howard, filling the sky with powerful magics. Rows and Rows of competing mages who would be the defining factor in a large scale war. ‘I wonder how long he can keep up this level of casting,’ thought Nero.
An arrow clipped Nero’s cheek, causing his mental probe to snap back to him like the end of a tape-measure. ‘What the hell was that?!?’ he wondered, as he felt blood starting to drip down his face.
Refocusing on the battle in front of him, he saw groups of kobalds holding up little bows and firing into the lines from, at most, 30 ft away. They didn’t seem to care that almost all of their arrows were slamming into the backs of their comrades.
Looking around, Nero could see several of these archer-groups firing at point blank range into the melee. Although most of the arrows didn’t do much, some of them made it through to the elites, and Nero could see the secondary line switching positions to replace the injured soldiers. There was even a soldier’s corpse being resuscitated near the back of the formation. ‘The first real casualty on our side,’ he thought, his face adopting a grimace.
Turning back to the kobalds, he could see that they fully intended to continue the suicidal practice of firing into the backs of their soldiers, hoping that one or two arrow might make it through. Without a doubt, this proved to Nero that when he had called them rabid lizard-children, he was not wrong.
Figuring that he should do something, he was about to cast a spell when he heard Sergeant Wesker, on his left, relay the exact same orders the sergeant on his right was saying. All along the line, the sergeants all shouted the same thing, “Secondaries! Take out those archers!”
Nero thought it was incredibly weird to hear the orders happening in surround sound.
Immediately, spears and arrows were launched into the archer-groups, punishing them for standing still in the middle of the battlefield. As the elites were able to shoot from an elevated position, they had no issues obliterating every one of their targets.
While it was arguably a clever idea for the kobalds to avoid the hovering shields by firing at the humans from a closer position, thereby negating the firing arc issue. Ultimately, Nero thought it was a dumb-ass plan. All the kobalds had managed to do was kill tons of their own troops and annoy the elites a little. Even their one successful kill was already being brought back and would soon be returning to exact his revenge on the little buggers.
Soon enough, everything returned to what was rapidly becoming the new normal. Kobalds would charge up to the line, trade a few blows, die, then get pulled off to the side.
By this time, Nero felt like he’d killed at least a hundred kobalds, all on his own, but they still kept coming. ‘Is this really how battles work in this world?’ he wondered.
Suddenly, he felt the ambient essence pull taut like a bow-string. For a moment, the entire ethereal plane seem pause in anticipation of something. Nero absently kicked the kobald in front of him, forcing it back to give him some space, allowing him a moment to focus on what was happening.
Then he heard it. Both in the ethereal plane, and the material one. It sounded like a gigantic sheet of construction paper tearing next to a microphone. The auditory assault made the hair on his head stand up, and a shiver shot its way up his spine. Whatever was happening was completely ‘wrong’, and he could almost hear the voice the world growling in annoyance at the slight to nature.
Nero heard Captain Angelton’s firm voice ring out over the field of battle, “Enemy summons incoming. Stand fast, and maintain position.”
Nero looked at the kobalds on the field in front of him, and the feeling of incoming danger got so much worse. They had all paused what they were doing, and were staring back toward the tree-line, clearly anticipating something worth seeing. Through his essence field, he could feel the combination of hundreds of kobalds all feeling giddy, and it was causing his hands to sweat.
Off in the distance, behind the tree-line, he could see the tops of several trees being pushed aside like something was forcing its way into the world. Although he couldn’t see what was happening in the ether, as the distance was too far for his field to reach, he could guess. Somehow, they’d opened a connection to another plane, and something was coming through.
‘I bet that is what it looks like when a spawn-point converts to a planar tear. This is going to suck… isn’t it. You know, when some asshole writes the story of my life, this is totally going to be a chapter ending cliff-hanger. I can feel it,’ he told himself, trying to inject some humor into the situation.
Comments
chris hobbyists
Loved the ending........
HereForHFY
Same :)
Ocean Breeze
I'm really enjoying this part.
