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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.36 (151)
🕑 Added 2024-04-11 22:30:03 +0000 UTC“It’s a summoning! They’re opening a planar connection just past the tree-line!” screamed Specialist Howard.
Captain Angelton could feel the essence in the ether shifting. The battlefield suddenly felt like it was holding its breath. The charging horde of kobalds halted their assault, and were now just standing there, looking back toward the tree-line, waiting to see what their leaders had called forth.
The captain turned to Specialist Howard and asked, “How? That shouldn’t be possible without a great deal of preparation and countless mages working in concert for days in order to charge the spell array.”
Although his voice was devoid of emotion, his iron will was struggling to contain his shock.
Specialist Howard met the captain’s eyes and said, “It was their shamans. They used their own dead as the fuel for their ritual. I recognize the spell-scripting. It’s a vile type of soul magic.”
The captain’s face twisted into a rare grimace. He had played right into their hands. He should have realized that the battle was going too well. He had known kobalds were capable of strategic thinking, and treating them as simple-minded monsters had been a mistake.
Infusing essence into his voice, he shouted, “Enemy summons incoming. Stand fast, and maintain position.”
Mentally widening the connection to command he still had active through the communication orb, he said, “S.T. 24 situation update. Enemy forces have activated a ritual summoning using their own dead as a sacrificial component. Shamans capable of soul magic have been confirmed through scrying. Request immediate reinforcements.”
He felt the mind on the other side of the connection almost recoil in surprise. “Reinforcements are still at least 2 hours out, probably closer to 3. Teleportation into the area is impossible, the essence currents are too strong to risk it without an astra-platform to target at your location. For now… wait one,” the voice said, then the mind on the other end of the connection dimmed as if it were paying attention to another conversation.
The captain grit his teeth, unsure of what he should do. Every second he hesitated was another second the ritual had to complete it’s purpose.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was at stake. Depending on the severity of the planar event, the portal could be anything from a singular beast summon to a towering rift capable of altering the local essence signature for years to come. He didn’t even have enough experience with these type of situations to know how long he had before the ritual finished. If they were really unlucky, the kobalds had coordinated with forces on the other side and this was a prelude to an extra-planar invasion. However, that was extremely unlikely.
As if the world were mocking him for his ill-advised hope, he felt the ground shudder as an explosion toppled several trees, allowing him to see the ritual happening off in the distance. Like a glowing beacon of doom, he saw reality tearing as a portal to another plane began to take shape. The sound of its arrival rattled the entire area, and all too quickly he saw the newborn rift beginning grow.
Not two seconds later, he heard the voice from command resume talking, “S.T. 24, Your orders are to do whatever you can to disrupt that ritual. We have confirmation that it is, in fact, a rift. Reinforcements are on the way, but they will be called back if that portal opens. The force heading your way is not prepared to face an organized invasion, and I repeat… They will be called back to the walls if that ritual completes. Do you understand?”
He could hear the woman’s poorly hidden panic being projected through the connection quite clearly. Obviously alarms were blaring all over the place in Dorchester.
Taking a deep breathe, Captain Angelton processed what he’d just heard. Command was sending them to their deaths. It made sense, and he didn’t fault them for it. It wasn’t like they’d live if the rift opens and the mountainside was overrun with kobalds. They couldn’t run away, and perhaps this way, their death could serve a greater purpose for Dorchester.
“I understand. We’ll get it done. S.T. 24 out,” he said, then closed the connection completely. Any more talking would be pointless, and a waste of his limited time.
While part of his mind reached out to his sergeants in order to start organizing the assault, he locked eyes with Specialist Howard. He could see the man eagerly waiting for orders.
“If we get you close enough, can you stop that rift from opening?” asked the captain.
Specialist Howard’s eye widened in surprise. His voice sounded a little unsure when he replied, “Possibly, if you give me enough time to study it. But stopping it before it fully manifests? Not likely. I’d feel a lot better about our chances if we had someone familiar with inter-planar essence man-” he paused abruptly, then grinned widely and continued, “Verena should be able to do it. The man was a director at one of the Center-Research facilities. I’m sure he’s at least read about the procedure.”
Captain Angelton nodded in agreement, but didn’t bother replying.
Turning to face the rift in the distance, he pulled his sword, hefted his shield, infused essence into his voice, and loudly ordered, “Collapse!”
-----
The chaos all around him was making his head spin. The elites on both sides were so close that he was having trouble not bumping into them. At one point, by reflex, he removed the sword arm of a kobald currently in melee with the elite on his right.
After resuming his fight with the kobald in front of him, Nero thought to himself, “No, it’s cool, don’t bother to thank me.”
If it weren’t for his mage-armor, he’d have definitely been clipped a few times by enemy weapons. Luckily, it didn’t seem like any of the kobalds were very skilled at essence infusion, and his protection was more than capable of handling a few hits. Though, that didn’t stop them from trying to stab him to death.
He’d lost count of how many times he’d rebuilt his mage-armor after it had started falling apart under the pressure of the enemy’s blades. It felt like it was getting easier to form it, but it was also taking more concentration to keep it running. The balancing act between how much focus he was dedicating to the technique was delicate, but he felt like he was handing it well enough.
Nero was careful to not impede his fighting ability, or allow himself to get too distracted. Luckily, it wasn’t like these kobalds were any more skilled than the ones he’d been fighting before, but down here there were just so many more of them. Every time he killed one, another one was right there, eagerly waiting to take its shot at killing him.
Occasionally there were some better equipped kobalds, even ones who had actual armor. He even saw one with a chain-mail shirt so big that it went down to its knees. Had the ridiculously dressed kobald not been trying to kill him at the time, Nero might have laughed at the sight of the little bugger.
As far as he could tell, there were only two positives about the situation. One, there weren’t too many of the giant lizards around, so he didn’t have to worry about being physically overpowered. And two, between the shields protecting the elites from the spells coming down on them from above, and how dense the fighting was, he didn’t need to worry about enemy spell-casters.
Despite having promised himself to pay closer attention to his internal clock, he had no clue how long this particular stage of the fighting had been going on. It could have been ten minutes, or an hour. But one thing was for sure, there was no way they could keep this up indefinitely. Eventually, they would start taking casualties. In fact, they already might have, and he just hadn’t seen it.
Between managing his mage-armor, and killing kobalds, he didn’t have the available brain power to monitor what was happening with the rest of the elites. His entire focus was split between the fight in front of him and the upkeep on the mage-armor. The longer the fight went on, the more effort it took to hold his mind together.
So it came as a complete shock when he felt the back of his tunic ball up in someone’s fist and he was yanked back into the center of the formation. Feeling his feet leave the ground, he saw another elite smoothly step in to take his place on the fighting line.
Stumbling a little, he had to stop himself from lashing out with his sword at whoever had just grabbed him. What little control he had over his attention span snapped like a thread, and he felt like he had been dunked in a tank of stupid-juice.
Luckily, he was able to understand whoever it was that was currently shouting loudly enough to be heard over the sounds of battle, directly into his ear, “Walker! You’re needed up at the front! Let’s go!”
All around him, he felt the elites participating in the battle. Every one of them was shooting arrows over the heads of the melee fighters, tossing spears, and some were even casting spells. He felt himself being dragged by his neck through the crowd, barely able to keep his feet on the ground. Whoever it was that was leading him clearly wasn’t concerned about Nero’s comfort. Had he been more aware, Nero would have found it extremely humiliating to be manhandled like a bully being dragged to the principal’s office.
The trip didn’t take long, and Nero managed to repress the urge to hamstring the bastard, mostly because he didn’t really understand why he wanted to. He could feel his thoughts becoming more and more scattered, but he couldn’t remember what to do about it.
‘The last time this happened was with the butterflies, right? Something is screwing with my concentration I think?’ he thought to himself, vaguely recalling one of his initial attempts to control his essence shield.
With his head still forcibly pointed at the ground, he heard the elite escorting him shout, “Captain! I found him!”
Nero felt himself being shoved forward, and he waved his arms to stop himself from falling over. Luckily, he was able to keep hold of his sword and shield when he felt his shoulders being gripped by hands large enough to crush his head. Feeling himself come to a complete stop for the first time in a while, Nero looked up to see the towering Captain Angelton staring down at him like an all-powerful war-god about to pass judgment. All thoughts about what was causing his brain to misfire were pushed to the back of his mind at the sight of the man. The captain’s gray eyes and blank expression nearly made Nero’s buckle in fear.
Completely ignoring what the man was saying, Nero looked the man over. He couldn't help but note the ripped tabard and nearly destroyed armor. From head to toe, the man was covered in blood and mud. It was obvious that the man had been through hell. Yet from his posture, the captain totally looked ready for more. ‘Holy shit this dude’s a bad-ass. I wonder how many kobalds he’s killed today? I bet -” his thoughts were interrupted by the captain.
Nero felt the man shake his shoulders and lightly slap him across the face to get him to focus. Unfortunately, a light slap from a man like the captain was more than enough to completely obliterate Nero’s mage-armor. The mental backlash he felt from the spell being overpowered nearly sent him to his knees.
After a second or two, Nero came back to his senses and realized that the captain was trying to get his attention. “Walker! Can you do it?!?” he shouted directly in Nero’s face, his tone demonstrating how serious the situation was.
As his mind was rebooting from having over half of his available brainpower dedicated to maintaining his mage-armor, he was still a little confused when he asked, “Can I do what?”
Leaning back as far as possible, Nero marveled at the fact that the man was so tall it was hard to make eye contact without straining his neck.
The captain held the young man’s shoulders in a vice-grip, nearly tipping him over, forcing Nero to look him in the eye. “Verena says you can disrupt an active rift. If we get you close enough, can you do it?” he asked sternly.
Nero felt his butt-hole pucker like he was being asked to diffuse a nuclear time-bomb. The sounds and smells of the battlefield once more started to make sense, and the reality of the situation started bearing down on him. The life and death stakes were once again something he had to contend with.
“Uh… I guess I could take a look,” he said, trying and failing to offer his patented smirk.
Apparently the captain was done talking, and Nero felt himself being dragged forward again. This time, the captain had actually lifted him up by his combat leathers, and Nero could feel the edges of his armor digging into his armpits. He felt like a toddler being picked up by his father holding him at arm’s length due to a diaper incident.
Luckily, the extra height provided him an actual view of the battle. Where before he was too short to see much of anything, now he was able to look over people’s shoulders to see a massive hole in reality filling the surrounding area with a hostile red light. With his mind running at full power once again, he was able to start taking stock of what was going on around him.
Looking up, he estimated the top edge of the portal to be at least 100ft tall, and the edges were so far apart that he couldn’t see the sides. The view through the portal showed him a completely different world, an alien world. He could see volcanoes far off into the distance, an orange overcast sky, and red soil and ash billowing outward through the portal like hot air from a kiln.
He hadn’t realized that the red light he had been seeing all around him had been coming from the rift. He’d thought it was the blood and death affecting his perception of reality, but it was actually just a massive hole in space connecting them to what he will now-and-forever refer to as ‘the reason kobalds are so willing to die’.
‘I’d probably do the same if my homeland looked like that. What a shitty place to live. It’s like people that choose to live Ohio,’ he thought to himself, remembering the time he had to drive through the entire state. Never in his life had he seen so little, for so long. Then he remembered driving through the middle of Illinois, his home-state, and suddenly felt like changing the subject.
Pushing aside his instinctual sarcastic response to intense situations. He grit his teeth and focused on the situation at hand. He realized he was viewing the rift through blue tinted panes of energy, all the while seeing arrows and spells being held back the spell-shields floating above him. The pace of combat hadn’t diminished in the least, but now that he was being carried through the formation like a baton, he was given the unfortunate chance to really take in the insanity going on all around him.
‘This is a real full-on tower control scenario! Invading monsters coming through a magic portal being held back by the soldiers of humanity with nothing but spells and steel! Their only hope for victory is taking over the portal and reclaiming the zone,’ he thought to himself. Even though he fully recognized the danger, he couldn’t help but feel some excitement at the idea of a dork like him being given the opportunity to experience something he’d always fantasized about.
While Nero was appreciating the fact that he was living his dream, he was dragged closer to the rift. The closer he got, the more he could see. Eventually he was able to look out onto an endless horde of kobalds trying to force their way through the portal. The rift was so wide, the elites weren’t able to stop the edges from coming through. From what he could see, they were barely stopping a third of the kobalds from making it through the rift. Even worse, he could see more of those kaiju-sized lizards being herded in the distance, along with several groups of the larger kobalds, mages, and shamans. All of them making their way toward the portal.
Suddenly, he felt gravity reassert itself as the captain let him go. Dropping to his feet, Nero shook his shoulders to loosen up the bunched up leathers while looking over at the captain and glaring at the man’s shoulder. Angelton had already turned away and was currently shouting orders to the rest of the troops.
Feeling yet another person grab him by the shoulders, he snapped his head around to see Nick’s panicked face staring at him with hope in his eyes.
Not two feet from Nero’s face, Nick shouted, “Nero, you have to disrupt the essence tether connecting the planes. I’m almost positive it hasn’t had time to solidify, so I think you can do it. Just concentrate and do your best. I believe in you.”
Nero grimaced at his friend and replied, “Look man, this is not where our story ends. Stop being a bitch.”
Nick’s grip on Nero’s shoulders faltered, and he looked at Nero in shock. A second or two passed, and then Nick burst into laughter. The wonderful sight of the blood covered man laughing like a mad-man as spells exploded overhead was enough for Nero to remember how to grin.
Swatting Nick’s hands off his shoulders, Nero said, “All right. Give me a sec, and don’t let anyone bother me… or kill me.”
He then closed his eyes and let his essence field expand with the aid of his full concentration. The sight of the battle suddenly became clear in his head. It was like switching an over-head pov in a game. All at once, he was perfectly aware of how badly they were fucked. It was like the elites were a small huddle of giants surrounded by an endless army of screaming children hell-bent on killing them.
Seeing how many kobalds were able to come through the sides of the portal, he remembered that he hadn’t seen the first kaiju that was there when the rift was first opening. Had he missed it when it emerged?
‘I really need to work on keeping my I.Q. above 50 while I’m using mage-armor. The damn thing is useless if it saves my life while turning me into a robot,’ he told himself.
He looked over at Nick and asked, “What happened to the first big-ass lizard?”
Nick’s face twisted in a grimace, and he replied, “We weren’t able to stop it. At least 10 of those siege-wyrms have already come through, and who knows how many foot-soldiers, mages, and shamans. All we can do now is close the rift as soon as possible, cutting off as many as we can, and then hope for the best. The only reason we’re still alive is because we’re surrounded and the kobalds are more interested in getting more troops through the portal than killing us at the moment. But that doesn’t matter right now. Nero, can you see the tether?”
Shocked at how much he had missed, and how bad things were going, he replied, “Uh, yeah. Give me a second.”
Closing his eyes and refocusing on his perception field, he thought to himself, ‘OK. So when I close this bitch I don’t think the kobalds are going to be very happy about it. Eh, I’m sure we’ve been fighting long enough for the reinforcements to get here before the little bastards manage to finish us off. As the great Malcolm Reynolds once said… something about being too good looking to die. God damn do I miss the internet.’
Comments
HereForHFY
Yeah, he really needs to start working on staying on target for at least a few moments before letting his mind wander off again :D
Ocean Breeze
Wow. Nero is so spacy. It's actually starting to get annoying.
