A clarion call to the Davids of the land to come back from the field and confront the Goliaths of their era.

Pre-Fall writer

The sound of brass bugles and the clamor of shouts is what woke up Johanna, from a dream of walking across a land on fire. In this particular nightmare, she was burning all the time, her mastery of fire forgotten, as her feet dragged, leaden by unseen shackles.

“Attack! ATTACK!” the call came, barely muffled by the door.

She shook Tom, who had yet to stir, and started fetching her clothes which she’d carelessly discarded in a corner of the small room that was their bedroom. Then she realized what was coming, and shoved these under the bedframe, and picked the leather uniform of the army. She wordlessly handed Tom his own, as her husband was still blinking from sleep.

As she exited the bedroom, she immediately went to the adjacent room and hammered the door. A muffled, half-incoherent word came from behind, and she immediately rushed along the corridor, only stopping after she’d stepped out in the garrison courtyard.

An officer she immediately recognized waved at her. Captain Devereaux. He was in charge of the company that was going to be their vanguard, having trained at Maistry Keep. They were supposed to take the day to practice, but it looked like the enemy had not waited for the reinforcement from New Benton to settle down.

People were rushing and assembling, and she focused on Devereaux.

“What’s going to happen? We should be safe in here, right?”

“We can’t afford to stay put. If we let them pass, then we have to come out later and catch them. Otherwise, once they get out of the Gap, they can attack anywhere, and cause untold damage to the Montana. No, we have to stop them here. And no, we can’t do that holed behind walls.”

A sergeant shouted, “Donnall? What you doing?”

“Sarge, I’m…”

“You want to protect your wife, it’s from the front where the enemy will be coming from. We’re going to be pushing, not standing around. GET. IN. POSITION.”

“Aye aye, sarge!” Peter said reluctantly as he ran toward the rest of the company.

More soldiers were slotting in position. As Johanna watched, the gate opened, and a first company then another slipped out.

“Time to move,” Devereaux said, looking at Laura.

She swallowed and looked at Johanna and Tom for comfort. Johanna grinned back, despite not feeling very confident suddenly, and a flame briefly sprang into her palm, dancing for a few seconds before she extinguished it. She lifted her spear and looked at Tom, who was taking the position on the other side of Laura. All three joined the company and they moved to the gates.

Once out, Johanna spotted the enemy forces. Three armies – battalions? whatever – were visible across the Gap. For a few moments, she wondered about the wendigos, before she realized what the white and grey furs she was seeing were.

There are wendigos along with all armies. They’re not fighting separately.

That went against what they’d been told during training at the Keep. The Wendigos were savages, barely above Changed beasts. They fought as “irregulars”, joining the battle as they wished, but not along with the tribal troops. And why not? When the snow and ice covered the ground, they would be pretty much better off on their own. Or so the officers had trained her to expect.

It wasn’t really freezing in this early November, though. Yesterday’s light snowing had almost evaporated. So… they were going to fight wendigos like they were tribesmen.

Crossbow bolts were already flinging across the field as a deterrent, and a few bowmen were shooting over the barriers of the frontlines, but to little effect so far. Most of the levies were melee, though. There had not been enough time to train them to use crossbows well, let alone real bows. And the frontlines were drawing closer and closer, as shields and spears were pointing at each other. The enemies were less than a mile from the garrison itself, and the army of the Montana was moving to meet them.

Devereaux pointed forward and their company started to jog forward. By the doctrine, their place was at the front line, not as support or in the reserve. Their goal was to break the momentum of the enemy, not wait.

Johanna looked around the battlefield and spotted the swirl of manalight.

“Captain? Enemy artifact to the left, on their west side.”

Captain Devereaux had been clearly briefed about Johanna’s yesterday surprise and didn’t ask any questions. He barked briefly an order and the company turned slightly. Strategy left room for tactics, and it was almost a given that any group important enough to bring an artifact to bear was a priority target.

A mixed-arms company moved behind them as support, following. On their right side, enemy forces moved to intercept, and suddenly, the first clash happened… and the enemy hesitated.

Johanna and Tom were at the edges, like the captain. Laura was very careful about not looking at them, and keeping focused on her front. The company, forewarned and, for many, trained already, adopted a more defensive position. Hesitation and heavy arms could be more easily ignored if you didn’t push an attack and reacted instead.

Then, Laura relaxed her gaze, and feeling the oppression lift, the Montanan soldiers surged, clashing against the still hesitant enemies.

Moore went googly-eyed, metaphorically speaking, when he saw the enemy forces. He had an extreme focus, a distance of sight that a 20-20 air force pilot might have envied him now, and that allowed him to take the forces coming to meet the American army.

And those forces included wendigos.

The fact that the system label was lower-case, instead of upper-case like all monsters were, could only mean those were people, just like “humans” or that one “dwarf” seen a couple of months ago in Valetta. So, what frightened him was that the small albino Chewbacca-lookalikes sported high levels. The human enemies were all level 3, 4, 5, and a few higher, but the wendigos were all 5, 6… even a few 9s. Given that they lacked a specialization moniker, and couldn’t grind skills, it meant these enemies earned XP the hard way.

Grinding. Fighting. Killing for XP.

Of course, the lack of specialization meant they couldn’t bring skills to the battlefield…

Okay, Ghosthound Battler. That’s a new one. Love the name, wonder where it came from.

Moore briefly slowed subjective time, checking the specialization. A level 5 Strength with Dexterity mix. One of the specializations that Tom would not get immediately upon leveling, since Moore hadn’t spent points in DEX yet. But seeing it let him delve in advance to the multipliers for it. He quickly dismissed it. A fast weapon user, more spear or pike oriented, with a weird mix of multipliers and counter-attack oriented skills. Worth picking if you had made an entire build aiming for it, but Tom’s current skills were unsuited to it. It would take tens of thousands of XP to shift that specialization.

So, Moore dismissed it and resumed normal subjective speed.

Let’s hope that one doesn’t have skills to complement that specialization. Just like the others.

And then, what he’d simultaneously feared and hoped happened. XP came in. Only 49 points in all pools, but still.

Killing people gives XP, like monsters.

For a few minutes, everything seemed to work well. Johanna had been gripping her spear hard, up to the point where she realized that some pain was seeping into her knuckles and she relaxed, as she’d been trained.

For some reason, she wanted a sword, not a spear.

Francesca would be proud, she laughed internally, before realizing the fact that she was finding humor as people were spearing themselves in front of her.

Laura, she saw, was keeping focused straight ahead. And she quickly realized that she wasn’t looking at the enemies. No, she focused on Peter, on the front line. This time, he wasn’t trying to avoid using his abilities. He kept his shield loosely, relying more on his instinctive moves, avoiding the enemies’ spears rather than blocking, all the while pushing his own spear into the enemy line. His only problem was that tribesmen’s shields did interfere with his aim. He’d realized during training that aiming for the most vulnerable point did not help much when said point had a shield between him and the spearpoint.

At the moment, Tom and she were useless. Just backup. She wanted to light her spear, but all this would do would put a target on her, mark her as a sorceress, and potentially dangerous.

Which, ultimately, was her role. Laura was the one affecting the battlefield. She was there to protect her friend.

She turned, tracking again the artifact. The swirl of manalight had moved further to the side, onto a small hillock. She pointed toward the target, and Devereaux acknowledged.

“Looks like a small company. And they want to go in position to get on our flanks.”

The captain smirked.

“Let’s not let them, then.”

The company smashed again into the tribal formation. Despite their slightly smaller stature, the wendigos fought extremely well. Their thrust with spears was highly accurate. And they barely succumbed to the Dreadful Gaze of Laura or at least didn’t seem to. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for the Montanan, they were few. The tribesmen had attacked before their main reinforcements arrived, Johanna surmised.

She asked briefly Devereaux, who was of the same opinion, “Yea, thought there would be more of the furred savages. Can’t complain. If they want to attack before it’s best for them, let them. Where’s the artifact?”

“Hasn’t moved for a minute. I think they’ve noticed us,” she replied.

“Sergeant Zane, pass the word. Next time Donnall relaxes, we push fast. I want to get them before they decide to escape,” the captain ordered.

“Aye aye.”

The maneuver went almost flawlessly. Despite the lack of training with the rest of the company, the switch between static, ponderous attack under Laura’s gaze, and the brutal advance as soon as she dropped it worked well. Although Johanna started to see a change. The tribals had losses, true, but they started to recognize the change. Still, so far, they had the tribals slowly retreating, suffering a fair number of wounded.

She was more worried about what could the artifact do. Now that she was closer, she could see the unit on the small hillock had a lot more wendigos. And it looked like one of them was the source of the manalight funnel swirling over the battlefield.

Arrows flew suddenly. The mixed unit on top let a volley, mostly stopped by the shields, but one of the Montanan soldiers screamed, with arrows wounding him. The ranks closed up.

“Too far,” Laura muttered.

“That’s unfortunate, but we’ll deal with it,” Devereaux answered.

That’s the moment where the wendigos jumped.

They literally grabbed tribesmen’s shoulders, using them to hoist themselves up, and flew a handful of yards, crashing on the shields of the left flanks.

Johanna realized they were opening a breach, as the wendigos immediately ducked under the enemy spears before the surprise dissipated, and half a dozen of Montanan soldiers fell, as weapons pierced them at various points, killing and incapacitating.

Laura shifted slightly her gaze at them, but that was the moment where a new volley of arrows came.

And she suddenly realized that the arrows weren’t aimed at the front soldiers or anything. As they ducked, she realized that they were shooting at the center.

At them.

She felt powerless and reflexively raised her spear, ready to light it and try to burn arrow shafts. Captain Devereaux grabbed her arm, restoring sanity.

“Milton! Don’t make us a target,” he said, equal tone as impressive as a shout.

“Too late. They’re already shooting straight at us. I think they’ve noticed we’re not normal soldiers in reserve.”

A new volley fell just in front of them, and she realized the enemy was trying to soften the side. The unit on the hillock was already splitting, archers keeping up position along with the artifact bearer, and the rest rushing suddenly down the slope.

She pointed, “THEY’RE COMING!”

Moore had been almost entirely focused on the fight, but that did not mean he wasn’t checking their status if only to see if they were exhausting their reserves.

That was the problem with field battles. Laura had exceeded 5k XP a few minutes ago, and he’d immediately raised her level, adding one point in each of her skills. But he did not dare switch specializations, lest she’d lose most of her mana mid-fight. He merely confirmed she had three specializations opening at level 5. Deep Fixer for the Agility, Combat Fixer for the Dexterity, and Tyrant Fixer for the Authority version.

Tom was just behind, at 4300XP already. He’d see about specialization for both later.

As for now, he had over 3000XP available for Johanna from both global and personal pools, and it was time to finally fix his mistake. He expected her maximum mana to dip by 5 during the commit, but she would still have plenty of reserves, so that was definitively not a problem.

2500 points vanished into the skill removal, and a second skill point popped in Johanna’s edited status. Now, he faced the same type of dilemma that he had with Peter. There was a 1×multiplier Steam Breath skill that was linked to Empathy, but it required both 17 in Dexterity and in Empathy. He also had a 1× Burning Coals to reallocate a skill back into Agility… but that one was requiring level 6 anyway. Meanwhile, he had more fire-based skills immediately, or almost immediately available in both Dexterity and Authority for two points.

Who am I kidding? I know she’s getting that one.

547 more XP vanished from the global pool, and Dexterity finished rising to 17. And Fireball joined the Flaming Blade skill as he committed the global change.

Fireball

Requires: Dexterity 17/Authority 17/Level 5

Effective: 2 × Dexterity + Level (adds 39 mana)

Passive: Grant bodily immunity to fire, up to 690°F (890°F/477°C currently)

Active: Launch a ball of 39 cubic inches (640cm3) of plasma up to 117 feet (35.6m)

Active cost: 1 mana per 39 feet (11.2m)