Steel Wolves of Craedia (Realm of Arkon, Book 3) (25 page)

"Hey, shitbag!" I yelled at him, burning my mana on more Stone Discs. "How do you like being blind?"

"I will have your soul, worm!" the monster bellowed, and charged at me with speed belying his great mass. Just as he did so, I shifted into combat form, spun around and steered Gloom toward the forming lines of the undead army, aiming at the twenty yard gap between the liches and a square squad of infantry.

The earth shook and trembled as we rode—the bloody special effects intended to heighten the drama. I'd already lost fifteen percent HP, but it was too soon to drink a health potion. I felt another sudden urge to laugh out loud. Was it nerves? It didn't matter. My laughter hardly resembled that of an ordinary human anymore—the vocal chords just weren't the same. It was the kind of laughter one might hear in a horror film that was certain to haunt your dreams if seen right before bed. It all seemed so hilarious to me: the dumbass skeletons, the nightmarish fiend on my tail, the alarmed voices in the raid channel... But through it all my mind remained perfectly clear. It was imperative to get past the undead without dealing even one point of damage to their units. Charge would carry me one hundred and eighty yards—thankfully, the laws of physics were still in full force—but I would need to wait till the last moment to use it. The undead army was lined up in dense formation, and I needed to slip through between the century of liches and an adjacent infantry squad while avoiding the bonehounds that were still pouring out of the castle. 

With Nerghall roaring at my back, I was suddenly within fifty yards of the undead—the aggro range. Two death knights turned their heads, pointing me out to their warriors and liches. As if in slow motion, hundreds of bony heads started turning my way. Forty yards. The warriors raised their shields, taking a step forward after their commanders; the mages spread out so as to not get in each other's way, a dark flame engulfing their hands, up to the wrist; the archers snatched the bows off their backs, some already nocking arrows. Twenty yards. I heard dozens, maybe hundreds of bow-strings snap, and saw just as many Spears of Darkness loosed in my direction...

"Come on, Gloom!" I bellowed, popping Charge and Fortification at once.

The back of the saddle smashed into my lower back—I was nearly two feet taller in combat form, and I just hadn't gotten around to replacing the saddle. As the wind blustered against my face, making it hard to breathe, one of the death knights raised his massive two-hander overhead, poised to strike me down. But I could already see that he wouldn't catch me. Neither would the mages and the archers—the vast majority of arrows and magic spears would miss the mark. Less than a dozen ended up hitting me and Gloom. Hart! Even in combat form I felt my body racked with horrid pain. Clenching my teeth, I downed a health potion.

A great share of the arrows and Spears of Darkness had found another mark instead—Nerghall. The pursuing beast roared behind me with indignation as the plate-clad warriors ahead scrambled to close their ranks...

"Too late!" I zipped past the two squads, and almost smashed into the scowling muzzle of a bonehound, evading left at the last second. There was a terrible crashing sound behind me as the Soul Devourer had altered his trajectory following my maneuver, and plowed full-speed into a cluster of mages as they were turning around after me. Or was that done on purpose, to repay them for the stray spears? It didn't matter—nothing mattered other than that the plan had worked!

The castle garrison's main boss' eyes blazed with a bloody rage. No longer paying me any attention, Kharsa turned and gunned toward the breaking lines of undead behind me—the rest of the canine beasts followed without hesitation. The century of liches was all but gone, its compact lines practically mowed down by Nerghall. I couldn't have dreamed of a better development—the undead army had been rid of its healers in one fell swoop! My ears were ringing with the din and rattle of the battle unfolding behind me, but none louder than the roaring of the Lord of Darkness as he engaged the warriors joining the fray, knocking them around like rag dolls. The raid channel was exploding with cries of shock and jubilation. Turning around, I watched with satisfaction as Nerghall threw out his tentacles, bonehounds hanging off his torso like pups off a grizzly bear. The sky grew dark from the arrows fired at the monster, as infantry squads surrounded him on all sides, trying to reach him with their rusty blades. The gods were on my side today—half the work was done! I raised my hand overhead, displaying a universally recognizable sign to the combatants, and steered the razorback toward my century.

Now all we could do was wait and hope that, besides Nerghall apparently having twice more HP than anticipated, there weren't any other rotten surprises in store for us. The castle garrison functioned like a single organism: hit one, and all would aggro on you, as was clearly demonstrated by the alpha bonehound when it had pounced on the Soul Devourer while completely ignoring little old me. And my Wolves could now simply watch the action from a distance—sans popcorn—out of range of the monster's abilities. Sure, it sucked that the guide had lied about the HP, but not necessarily critical.

I hadn't slept at all the previous night, crunching numbers and trying to account for every possible scenario. The math looked as follows: if the Lord were attacked by an average of five hundred skeletons simultaneously, getting through his defenses for at least three thousand damage per second, taking into account reduced damage due to the level difference, it would take the undead forty to fifty minutes to burn through one and a half billion HP. But now that the beast ended up having a hair over three billion HP, all my calculations had to be doubled. This new development might even play into our hands—the longer the Lord would last, the less work there would be left for us.

I looked back to the pandemonium behind me... and froze. The next moment I pulled up the calculator, which only made it worse. Kharsa was latched on to Nerghall with a death grip, and the latter was attacking the bone hound with three tentacles at once. How could I have foreseen this! Even at thirty thousand damage per second, the hound wouldn't last an hour! Why oh why did I need to train that thing on the liches? Now there wasn't anybody left to heal the bonehound! What douchebag had written that shitty guide?! And how was anybody supposed to kill this bloody beast? What player could even tank him? After smoking the castle boss, Nerghall would start mowing down the skeletons by the dozens, making the eventual undead victory much less certain. And there wasn't anything I could do to remedy the situation. Hart! Or... could it be that I was worried for nothing? 

"If I wasn't seeing this with my own eyes, Dark One, I never would have believed such a thing was possible!" A beaming Vaessa touched three fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, imitating wild applause. 

"Squad leaders, to me!" I breathed into the officer channel, passing the tiflingess, and steered Gloom toward the main group.

"Is something wrong? Krian?" the magus' bone horse caught up with my boar.

"When did you obtain that ability of yours from the goddess?"

"I don't know," the woman shook her head. "Perhaps at birth, perhaps the night we met. Why?"

"How did it happen?" I raised my hand, calling to silence Iam and Salta who were the first to approach. The demons stiffened up, sensing that something was off, and perked up their ears.

"In a dream, most likely, but... I simply know that the mistress had commanded me to follow the dreamer." 

"Then why were you refusing to speak with me initially?" 

"There was no reason to speak with you. Besides, I hardly ever break from my work. If it weren't for your words about my father... I had only remembered Celphata's bidding in the course of our conversation—that's called a mental anchor. The ability appeared at that moment as well."

"You couldn't tell me about it then?" 

"What for? I didn't think it was important." 

"Listen, all of you!" I snapped at the demons surrounding me, shouting over Nerghall's roaring. "If any of you are charged with any tasks by a deity, you must report to me about it immediately. This is important!" 

"Forgive me, Dark One," the daressa lowered her eyes. "It was probably foolish of me..."

"It's not that. Each of you sees only a piece of the big picture, and is unable to draw the right conclusions. I can't do it either, but I do see more than you, which makes it easier to make decisions." 

Seeing the pale faces of the demons around me, I remembered in time that emotional speeches spoken in combat form differed somewhat from regular emotional speeches, so I toned it down some.

"Vaessa, you are aware that I see your abilities differently than you do. Well, this ability of yours... It works not only against creatures from the Gray Frontier. I didn't attach any significance to that initially, but had I known that you were gifted this ability then, along with orders to follow me, I might have connected it to the disappearance of the book of prophecies from the Xantarrian library..."

"And what would you have done? Refused to kill this bucket of scum?" Vaessa jerked her chin in the direction of Nerghall, who was flailing his tentacles wildly.

"No, but I would have had a talk with the commander of the Xantarrian army. He's the only one who seems to remember the text from the missing book." 

"Would you tell us what happened, dar?" Elnar demanded, his patience apparently wearing thin. "From where I'm standing, everything is working out beautifully. The stiffs and their hounds will take down the Soul Devourer, and we'll mop up the survivors, grab the loot, and feast to our victory this very night." 

"It's not all smooth sailing," I said, breaking his flight of fancy. "The undead might not succeed, and then we'll have only two options: retreat, or try to finish the job the skeleton army had started." 

"So what's the problem? We practiced falling in and out for hours last night." Iam took off his helm and looked inside it, as if looking for something, then fixed his hair and gave me a searching look. "Or do you think we've forgotten everything?"

"I think that the tiniest mistake may cost us everything, and my decision will depend on many factors. That is all." Looking around my troops, I barked one final order. "Stay alert and watch your people. Any idiot who gets caught by a tentacle will make our victory all but impossible. Now go—stay with your troops and wait for my command. Vaessa, don't leave my side for a moment, and tell me again all you can remember about your mistress' will."

There's nothing worse than waiting, and the next hour and a half ended up being the longest and hardest I'd spent in the Realm of Arkon, with the possible exception of my original arrival. Everything had been going well until the moment Kharsa went down, which happened at the sixty fourth minute of the fight. Suddenly untanked, the Soul Devourer began methodically slaughtering the undead host surrounding him. Taking into account the fact that by then Nerghall had already taken out about a quarter of the castle garrison with his AoE abilities, it had become perfectly clear to me that finishing off the beast from the Gray Frontier would be on us, assuming I had the testicular fortitude to issue such a command. In the five minutes that Vaessa could Silence the boss, between my combat form, the getare's ram attack, and the entire century's array of special skills, we were supposed to burn through roughly two hundred million HP. Nerghall's health bar was presently stuck at ten percent. A measly hundred skeletons or so had remained of the once mighty army, and they wouldn't make much of a dent in the few minutes they had left to live. Hart! Another decision upon which rested the fate of my entire clan. If the Lord had over three hundred million HP left, I wouldn't have risked it, but now...

The pool looks so small from the top of a thirty-foot diving board.... 

"Troops!" I stood up in my stirrups, sensing the lines of clanmates at my back stiffen. "Attack!!!" A haunting wolf's howl pierced the crimson sky as I took off, popping Charge and shifting into combat form. A familiar rage began to rise from deep within my consciousness, but this time I didn't stand in its way. The wind whistled, gusting through the slits of my helm, the carcass of the six-armed nightmare on the tip of my lance growing larger and larger. "Now, Vaessa!" I bellowed, running over one of the last remaining skeletons, and popping Fortification along with Infernal Rage. 

The lance plunged into Nerghall right under his left shoulder blade, and the impact of Gloom smashing into his knee made the beast stagger. Crit! Almost six million! If ever there was a sign that I'd picked the right build, it was this: doling out such figures despite the target being three times my level was simply outrageous. Nerghall's roar of fury and pain was deafening, while the stench oozing from the monster and the sea of corpses around me nearly knocked me senseless. But then the rage finally broke through, every last drop of it, sweeping away all sensory distractions.

Tossing aside the broken body of the last death knight, the Lord began turning toward me just as the collective getare force smashed into his side. The monster's hide lit up with the colorful flashes of finishing shots from my mages and archers, already in position. Then I noticed a cloud of gray smoke form around the boss' repugnant muzzle—Vaessa's ability had worked!

"Celphata! You whore! Where are you?! You won't succeed the second time!" the Lord of Darkness thundered, striking at me with four of his tentacles at once. 

Gloom caught the first blow, and another I blocked with my shield, but the other two landed, hitting me in the shoulder and hip, and nearly knocking me out of the saddle. My breath caught in my throat as inhuman pain ravaged my body, plunging my health bar into the yellow. But the agony was gone almost instantly, washed away by a string of healing spells. I sliced through the purulent hide with Tongue of Flame, followed by the blue flourish of Ice Blade. The systems log spat out a message that the boss was immune to freeze.