Sebastian lost himself in the chaotic swirling emotions of war. He was terrified that he would die, furious that they were trying to kill him, concerned for the men around him, and absolutely appalled that Sarah was being subjected to this insanity. The potent mix of fear, anger, and adrenaline coursing through his system had him firing arrows left and right as fast as he could draw a bead on a target, instinctively seeking out the larger Twisted. He found that trolls didn’t freeze nearly as much from his frostfire arrows as other twisted did, but they made up for it by being spectacularly flammable. Even the ones caught on the edge of the blasts tended to catch on fire at least a little bit, and would flail about madly trying to put it out. They generally succeeded too, but only because they managed to smother the flames with smears of blood and gore spraying from the nearby goblins that had the singular misfortune of being too close to the enraged and panicked troll.

Ogres on the other hand, were solidly built enough that even chunks that were frozen solid and brittle tended to diminish the blast radius of the arrows. That wasn’t too bad of a tradeoff though, since they produced more lethal shrapnel than anything else he hit so far, other than the trees. Orcs and goblins he only hit a couple times, usually when he missed one of the larger targets he had been aiming at, and it didn’t seem to make much difference which one he hit, the resulting blast was the same.

He instinctively channeled mana into his eyes, and the ability to see the flows of mana around him produced an unexpected, but very welcome side effect of improving his night vision. Faintly glowing mists illuminated the battlefield in unnatural hues, dotted with the bright pinpoints of focused magic in his traps as they waited to detonate. The sudden shift in perspective shocked him out of his unthinking trancelike state, and he looked around wildly at the guardsmen around him. They were shooting him the occasional glance filled with a mix of awe, fear and respect.

He took a long, ragged breath, “What the fuck just happened to me?!” As he managed to clamp down on his swirling emotions and pull himself back under control with an iron will, he looked at one of the closest guards, hoping the man would have an answer.

“It’s, it was the battle lust sir! I’ve never seen it before in person sir!” the man seemed unwilling to meet Sebastian’s gaze, which wasn’t actually that surprising since Sebastian’s eyes were currently spinning and dancing with chaotic light, and the lines on his face seemed to be shimmering and swirling as mana flowed through them.

Sebastian frowned, he knew it was the height of idiocy to be trying to ask someone questions in the middle of a siege, but he couldn’t help it. “What the hell is battle lust? Why would it happen to me?”

The guard gulped a bit, “Sir, it’s berserker’s wrath, the warlords rage, every guard has heard of those that are dismissed from service because they lose themselves in battle, and are driven to kill and maim and slaughter until nothing is left or they fall. They often can’t tell friend from foe, they hardly feel pain, it’s, it’s frankly terrifying sir!”

That troubled Sebastian deeply, he didn’t like the thought of losing control so badly that he would endanger his friends and loved ones. He gazed out at the battlefield, his enchanted vision offering him a unique tapestry of war to gaze upon, and as he saw his own handiwork wrought upon the flesh of living beings in the form of torn and scorched bodies, shredded and dismembered limbs scattered about like chaff he was filled with a sudden overwhelming feeling of revulsion, he could taste acid at the back of his throat as his stomach threatened to rebel against him. He managed to hold it back briefly, until he caught sight of a group of goblins that had ceased charging momentarily and were enthusiastically feasting on the mangled corpses of their fallen brethren.

Sebastian immediately ejected the contents of his stomach onto the floor. As he spat out the last bits of it and straightened upright, he was filled with a vast loathing and disgust for these monsters. He gripped his bow tightly, and upon noticing that he was running far too low on his enchanted arrows, he borrowed some regular ones from the nearby guards and began to fire once more. A couple more of his incinerator traps went off, heating their surroundings to temperatures high enough to melt the trap into slag, and producing that pillar of flames he had seen earlier as it caused everything in its vicinity to ignite. Booms heralded the detonation of his frostfire traps, as they froze their surroundings and then promptly detonated with a wash of flame and concussive force.

The traps he was most proud of, but also a touch skeptical as to their effectiveness were also rather subtle. They caused the earth around them to bubble upwards a bit, as the trap simultaneously counteracted the forces of friction and caused the dirt and stone to repel each other ever so slightly. A ring about ten feet in diameter suddenly started to swallow every twisted that entered it, but since it just looked like a slight hill, and the vast majority of the monsters were monumentally stupid, they just kept running into it, the few that stopped were pushed by the ones behind them. After a minute or so the earth settled as the trap sank too low to have an effect on the surface any longer.

It left a barren depression of earth behind it, surrounded by a ring of displaced dirt and rock that had been shoved to the sides by the spell. Watching that display cemented a name for the trap into his mind. His gravedigger traps were the only ones that didn’t self-destruct on their own. He hadn’t made many, since he didn’t actually know if they would be as effective as his more openly destructive traps, and because they actually required two enchantments. He had placed a featherfall enchantment on a spare bit of metal and attached it to the plate in order to prolong its presence near the surface. The reason they didn’t destroy themselves directly was that he felt it wasn’t necessary. If it hadn’t worked the way he expected, then he would have left a few essentially worthless enchanted items where the Twisted could find them, but if it did work right, it would burrow its way through the ground, taking whatever unfortunate souls that happened to be nearby with it. When its mana ran dry, the ground around it would re-solidify, encasing it and its victims in earth and stone. Any time it managed to gather enough mana to become active again, it would promptly trigger from the weight of the earth around it and sink further down.

Of course, Sebastian figured that its victims would likely suffocate very quickly, since it didn’t add air or anything, and breathing in clouds of dirt and rock would probably be less than pleasant. Particularly if they were still alive when the thing ran out of power, or if they somehow miraculously managed to catch hold of the edges of the traps area and attempted to climb out. He knew that later he would probably be equal parts pleased with its lethality, and disgusted and disturbed by both its lethality and his finding pleasure in it. Right now though he was firmly clamped down on his emotions, suppressing them with all of his willpower.

He watched as the twinkling lights of his traps enchantments winked out of sight with depressing rapidity, each accompanied by the various effects he had enchanted them with. It isn’t enough. He thought grimly. He couldn’t see to the forest anymore, it had gotten too dark out, even for his enchanted vision, but everywhere he could see there were goblins, orcs, ogres, and trolls. Despite everything, despite the colossal amount of damage they had done to the horde, they continued charging the walls, and they blanketed the fields like an unholy sea.

As they got close to the walls he saw brilliant balls of roiling fire soar out from the wall on either side of him as Owdel and Sarah both lashed out at their foes, the almost liquid like flames splashing into the twisted. Howls of agony reached his ears, and the stench of burning flesh that wafted back to them nearly caused him to retch again. The Twisted reached the base of the wall, and hope flared in his chest as he realized that they had no way of climbing it, and if they kept the stronger ones from reaching the gate, they could probably keep them out for quite some time.

His hopes were dashed as something whistled past his head, nicking his ear and sending a searing flash of pain through it. He activated his bracer just in time as two more arrows bounced off of the barrier. Then the wall shuddered under his feet as something slammed into it. He looked out at the horde in shock and spotted a few ogres scattered about that had gotten close enough to throw things at the wall, and they didn’t seem particular about what they threw. The shudder had been caused by a large rock slamming into the side of the wall very near Sebastian, but he also saw one wing a goblin that sailed over the wall and splattered across the cobblestone street. Another rock caused the wall to shudder, and then a goblin smashed into a nearby guard, causing them both to tumble off of the wall to their deaths. Another nearby guard caught an arrow in his shoulder, and a few more skipped off Sebastian’s shield.

He noticed that he was drawing a very large amount of the projectiles, and cursed, “Bloody gods damned glow in the bloody dark bullshit!” A sudden realization hit him. They’re aiming at the lights! Sarah! As he took off down the wall in her direction, turning off his bracer for now so he didn’t accidentally kill or maim the guardsmen he passed, he heard the signal to retreat to the pass and ignored it. When he spotted her his heart sank, she was curled around her knees with her back against the crenellations, ghostly pale with blood smeared across her face.

He felt a desperate urge to find out how badly she was hurt, but they had no time. He scooped her into his arms and leapt off of the wall without hesitation, trusting in his featherfall ring to protect them. He hadn’t intended for it to support more than one person, so the landing was heavier than he had grown to expect, but he ignored the pain that flared in his ankle and took off for the back gate and the pass as fast as he could. Resounding thuds echoed through the town as the twisted battered at the gate, and he fervently hoped that it wouldn’t fail before he made it to the pass.

Just as he managed to make it through the back gate he heard a crashing noise behind him and glanced backwards, his eyes widening in horror as he saw that not only had the gate fallen, the wall itself had succumbed to the battering assault of dozens of thrown rocks. Sections of it were collapsing into rubble, and orcs and goblins were scrambling across the loose stones in their eagerness to get into the town.