Chapter 078: Taking Hold [part 02]

The wave after wave hit the Firewing’s magical wall. Each composed of hundreds of small - and burning with the intensity of white phosphorus - spawns of Zhrkgkgjk. The big guy was furious. Who likes being woke up with a fake sun right above their head? And it even set him aflame.

The fighting was fierce and desperate. We formed a half circle around Firewing, defending her from those spawns that pierced her magic wall. Of course, it was a bit of a desperate fight. Spawns were intensely resistant to physical damage, which limited our melee fighters to holding the line. We had some magic that could wound them, but we were still a bit weak on the field of fire magic. I missed Vaera.

After maybe a ten minutes of fierce fighting, we started being pushed back. I had half of my mana left. Lana started limping. Simea was dissolved to death. Kovacs team was in similar circumstances. Of course, the retreat was still organized. Firewing could walk slowly in any direction she wanted, just not too fast or it would break her concentration.

We almost made it to the exit… when utterly unexpected cavalry arrived.

Soldiers that we told to retreat decided to show some initiative. They quickly secured a bridgehead around the exit door… and began using A LOT of firebombs. Firewing made it together with her alchemical squad. We stashed it in the agricultural zone, but mostly forgot about them in the heat of the moment. The adventurers also had some guys capable of casting fire magic.

They cleared our way of retreat. And then joined with us. I catched a glimpse of a corridor before the agriculture room. They’ve made a human chain, constantly delivering new fire bombs to the frontline. Huh. Note to self - do not underestimate the Ardent Flame members.

By the time we retreated to the exit, the Massive Spawn was down to half of its size. The dying minor spawns dissolved into almost nothing (save for some limited residue that had some use in weird types of alchemy), which meant that he was constantly losing its mass. No chances to replenish it. And the sun still burned.

Even then, despite all of that - and the firebombs - it still succeeded in pushing us back. We didn’t have to hurry. Firewing started getting weaker - having to run the artificial sun and the powerful magic shield cost a lot of power. Our strongarms were cut down by half in numbers. Soldiers were extremely useful, but they wouldn’t hold too long without the Firewing’s wall. Casualties right now, when the Twilight War was in front of us? No way.

We retreated and had Firewing reseal the door. At this point, the massive spawn was ⅓ of its original size. It was a pyrrhic victory for him. All we had to do was to retreat to lick our wounds for most of the day. Then we struck again. Spawn - while generally pretty stupid - had a good idea, and instead of waiting for us to get world’s worst sunburn it charged. A second after we opened the door, the wave of murderous slime poured through.

The spawn was trying to get out of the potential sunlight exposure. This surprised us, but enough to be a critical failure on our part. It managed to push us back for around ten meters, causing a bit of a panic attack to Flame’s soldiers (they got better quickly). Then Firewing fired her magic shield spell that covered entire corridor. With this degree of concentration, the spell was practically impenetrable.

It worked both ways. We couldn’t attack it, either. Which led to a bit of a stalemate. Of course, the wall only stopped physical attacks, but this included the spawn’s biggest vulnerabilities. Fire. We could cast life or death magic on it for weeks before it would get seriously weakened. It also pushed us back far enough for the Firewing to have major troubles activating something as complicated as the artificial sun - if she tried, it could break her concentration enough for the wall spell to collapse.

The stalemate was broken when Kovacs had an idea. We rolled remaining fire grenades towards the shield and had Firewing make a step back while making sure that for a second there was a hole in her shield. The grenades rolled onto the other side of it and exploded.

Rolling the grenades meant that their actual pathway was almost certain - especially when we discovered that Kovacs enjoyed bowling on Earth. Each grenade rolled exactly when it was supposed to, meaning that Firewing had it much easier to make the holes right at the time, and exactly when they had to happen. I also assisted her together with two penitent sorcerers - if the bomb failed to go through because it bounced off from Firewing’s wall or the spawn managed to push it back to our side, we could instantly cover our archmage with our magic shields. We also used them (and a bit of telekinetic spells) to make sure that most of the bombs was successfully pushed onto the other side.

It took us two hours of a weird form of bowling to deal enough damage for the spawn to be pushed out of the corridor. Then an hour of more typical combat, until the spawn finally fell. The victory belonged to us. With limited casualties. We lost four people, including two that were alive but weren’t going to be awfully useful for anything even remotely resembling a fight. Losing limbs to an acidic murder-goo was beyond the level of our homebrew alchemy. If we had more money and access to some quality alchemical laboratory, restoring them would be possible.

Regardless of that, we’ve retook the entire agricultural zone. With minimal losses. And relatively quickly. Firewing inspected the place properly. Yhrezerach ACTUALLY PROVIDED SOME HELP. It required a lot of investments to start producing food - but we were going to have that amount of money. Especially after I grill the Crows’ ass enough for the Imperium to help us a bit. Within a month, the agricultural zone - with the Yhrezerach’s power channeled through the astral core accelerating the growth and preventing the soil from losing its fertility - will be able to provide enough food for all inhabitants of the Hold to live in relative comfort.

In short, we won the battle.

And then things got… complicated.

***

We’ve made attempt to storm the last remaining part of the Hold kept by forces of the Pentagram (save for the mines, I’m totally waiting for Leria for that place). The combination between military headquarters of the old Ardent Flame - and the civilian district, where all the manials supporting the order lived in. One side of it was military, the other civilian. It was divided by the underground river and connected with a stone bridge.

We’ve made an advance camp at the cathedral - just in case. We planned to do it the old school way. Go there, land there, kill everything there. Simple. Unfortunately, we failed miserably.

Parts of the Hold we’ve retook where essentially captured by various strays. Zhhhh didn’t really planned, he just destroyed. Hence, the whole place was just a random mishmash of his spawns, Devoured members of the Ardent Flame and so on. Plus the Aberrant that sneaked in. The only actually organized resistance was shown by the areas where eldritch knights etc. were placed.

The entire headquarters of the Ardent Flame were changed into a massive fortress of the Pentagram. With only the Yhrezerach’s influence from the cathedral stopping them from spilling throughout the Hold.

Our initial attempt barely even reached the place. We were almost at the harbor when the bridge suddenly started crawling with enemies. Close to twenty of them. All hobgoblins defaced with extensive self-harm and generally looking like they were straight from a torture dungeon. Each of them with a bow.

Abyssal Warriors. The Dead’ from the Pentagram-worshipping empires of the world’s deepest layers of the caverns beneath the world surface. De facto ruled by Agony’ and her demigods.

We had six large boats. My and Kovacs group in the first one. Firewing and best of penitent in the second. In the rest - every type of Ardent Flame troops. It should be a massacre. Abyssals’ aren’t actually known to be really proficient in war. They typically use their numbers to overwhelm their enemies. Unfortunately, it was a trap.

As rain of our spells and hexes began shredding the bowmen into pieces, the trap closed. Water suddenly turned turbulent. When we were too busy trying to avoid falling from the boats, new enemies showed up. At least twenty Rifts Marines’, Warriors’ equivalent from the depths of the seas and oceans, where in life they worshipped Discord. Each of them looking like particularly creepy crossbreed between human, squid and fish. Each of them inheriting a completely random set of traits from that.

Their target was obvious. The hex cast on the water was almost enough to overturn the boats. They planned to finish the job. Or, if they failed, snatch sorcerers or weaker warriors and drown them. As aquatic beings, there were much better in combat in water than us. This allowed them to partially make up for their general inferiority.

Surprise was total. One of the boats carrying soldiers was overturned, and the intense stab fest in the water began. One of the marines almost pushed a spear through my throat, but Lena stabbed him first. She also managed to grab my hand and pull me back, right before I feel from the boat. Simea leapt from the boat, using the other boats as stepping stones. Within three seconds she reached the overturned boat and began stabbing people.

I hate being a squishy wizard. Though my wife is absolutely badass and I like it.

What followed was ten seconds of frantic spell and hex casting, all while our warriors were busy holding their ground against the marines. Then Firewing create a powerful magic shield and I started shouting orders, no longer afraid of becoming a target of the archers’ attention.

Another mistake. The enemy played us however they wanted.

Previously hidden enemies entered combat. Gold V Death Eye (massively more powerful Watcher) flanked by two Silver V Starborn Aberrations. Someone once described them as an irregular and pulsating crystal in unhealthy colors that someone’ tried to cover in skin. The effect was equally irregular and unnerving floating ‘thing’, that wasn’t a daemon. It was one of the Dead. Judging from the fact that they were servants of the Extinction, and her domain was the stars… well, it offered some unhealthy implications.

All three of them were on bridge. And began bombarding us with hexes. Death Eye focused its attention on the Firewing’s shield, showering it with constant barrages of ray magic that forced her on the defensive. Starborn Aberrations had another job. They concentrated their power. And then cast the same, powerful offensive hex of the Void Magic.

An aura user would have a chance of avoiding the Annihilation Ray, even at this relative short distance. But me? Sure, I had Leria teach me some basic aura magic in her free time, but it was enough to make me run faster and stuff like that. Two rays, both concentrated on me as an obvious commander of the attack group, pierced the Firewing’s shield and then me. Each left a fist wide hole in my body, before piercing Lena behind me and the boat.

I was dead before I fell into the water.

***

After I went through being reborn - naked - with people around (urgh), I could finally spend a while comprehending the almost perfect Giant Killing that was just scored on me. Needless to say, I was super pissed. I don’t enjoy being the dumber one around.

When I reached the Cathedral, the remains of the assault party were already there, licking their wounds. We failed to make landfall, and yet lost SEVEN people. Four dead, three suffering crippling wounds that will take months to heal. And that’s not counting the fact that Lena died with me (resurrection was … a bit upsetting because of that), Syna was pulled into the water and stabbed to death soon after, and half of Kovacs party was torn into pieces together with their boat by the Annihilation Rays.

The only reason anyone managed to get out of that ambush was that Firewing went (almost) all out. She had an in-depth talk with Yhrezerach about the amount of magic he is able to hide when they are casted in his domain. She abandoned the magic shield, threw a whitefire bomb at the bridge. The effect was an explosion of flames so hot that the bridge in question essentially melted. Starborn Aberrations’ died, by the Death Eye narrowly escaped this fate.

This changed little at the general state of affairs. We were decimated. Proceeding forward with this degree of disorganization and against enemy that proved to be this good was nothing more than a suicide. So the group retreated to the Cathedral, where Firewing stashed a lot of medicaments.

We had to try again.

The problem was that we encountered servants of Discord, Agony and even the least active divinity of the Pentagram - Extinction. This degree of cooperation could only mean that Malice was pulling the strings here. Then again I could scarcely imagine anyone BUT Malice being capable of making such moves. Extinction was am omnicidal maniac that could only obliterate everything. Agony was much too busy torturing everyone (including her own servants) to make plans. And Discord was too busy sabotaging her own plans just to cause more chaos. So, the most nefarious and dangerous beings of the Pentagram was a part of this.

What else was waiting for us inside?

***

We made second attempt three days later, after we spent a lot of time thinking about the strategy. No more running in blind. We had to figure out things before attacking the main headquarters again. It was war. And people we lost were lost forever. Save for those we linked to the system, of course, but they were still a minority.

We also had to fix damaged boats, and even improvise some new ones. Thankfully, one of the adventurers we picked up at our trip to the Northern Aevaria turned out to be from a coastal town. He worked for a while fixing boats for the local fishermen. Firewing had to improvise the magical engines for them, but she was pretty great at improvising things.

Our second attack at the Ardent Flame headquarters was much better organized. Shield was there from the start. Firewing also prepared some sort of offensive spell that was wired into the magical enchantment at the bottom of the leading boat. It fired every ten seconds, causing a shockwave that was rather painful to everything in the water nearby.

A group of Abyssals attempted to hinder our landing. This time, with some Abyssal Hexcaster. Sure, a staff crowned with a still beating human heart looked pretty scary, but… this wasn’t on our level of combat power. We’ve made short work of them and soon landed on the harbor. Combined forces of my and Kovacs’ parties stormed through the stars, quickly securing the bridge.

Counterattack was almost immediate. Once we secured the cavern, five dreadnoughts led by death eye stormed through the south gate. Dreadnoughts were bigger and stronger versions of eldritch knights and pandaemonium knights. Each could serve as a final boss of relatively difficult dungeon. And death eyes were sometimes seen leading large raiding parties (up to a thousand strong) from the Abyss beneath the caverns into the inhabited regions. They were powerful.

In short, 95% of adventuring parties would suffer full wipes. Right now and right here. But we had an archmage that could focus the death eye’s attention to herself. And our numbers were far above typical party, which should be enough for the dreadnoughts. Should be.

I shouted my first hex, as two lines of warriors clashed.

***

We have succeeded in driving the dreadnoughts back. Two of them fell in combat, the others were almost massacred and retreated. Death eye engaged Firewing in pretty magnificent magic fight… that Firewing won. The eye fell down, melted, with bits of burning tentacles scattered around. We’ve managed to secure a bridgehead.

Since the counterattack came from southern, ‘militant’ part of the headquarters, I’ve decided to push that way. It had a priority. We’ve left a significant part of our forces on the entry cavern, and then made a push south.

Fightings were fierce. The whole place was more or less defensible, and the enemy made sure to create various obstacles and barricades, reinforced with various types of magic. Once again, the enemy forces were composed of various Pentagram servants, both of demonic origin and the Dead. We’ve managed to secure the first hall, only to get swarmed by a counterattack. More dreadnoughts, and an absolute loads of their lesser brethren.

This counterattack pushed us all the way back to the main cavern before we managed to whittle the enemy numbers low enough for us to be able to gain ground again. We’ve pushed the dreadnought line back into the first hall, and then dispersed them.

First room to our left turned out to be a small chapel/church dedicated to Overtyrant. To say that it was desecrated would be an understatement of the century. Leria would go berserk if she saw that.

First room to our right was former barracks of Ardent Flame members, together with a small armory. The battle raged between bunk beds - some of them ended up used as projectiles, while others as barricades. Some adventurers and militiamen were steadily pushing them back, even without help of our strongest warriors. So I turned my attention elsewhere.

The large set of doors on the opposite side of the first hall were sealed and warded with magic. Rather than trying to burst through, I’ve left a small ‘garrison’ after we cleared the second room to the left (that I presumed to be largely defunct teleporter that allowed people to evacuate to some unknown part of the wilds surrounding the Hold). Then we pushed through the sole remaining door.

On the other side of the door was the hospital. Made sense to make it close to the teleporter. A small army of Abyssals and Rifters defended it, using overturned beds as covers. We expected to make a short work of them, when suddenly a new enemy showed up.

She was tall, wore only a number of bone fetishes and amulets, and had wet, green skin (very weird in touch, if I remembered it correctly from the old game). Her hair was made of black, thin tentacles. She also carried a staff made of some gnarly wood-like material that seemed weirdly tentacle in shape. The most noticeable feature of them all was the lack of eyes, however.

Shit, they had a siren. “COVER YOUR EA…” I tried to shout a warning, but a bit too late.

The unholy wailing that left the siren’s mouth simply couldn’t be compared to any other sound I ever heard. The eardrums of the nearby soldiers were instantly ruptured, as the closed space only further amplified the noise. Everyone suffered from instant sanity damage and physical debuffs. Everyone… save for the abyssals and rifters, that instantly charged at us with renewed vigor.

Firewing answered immediately, with a Grand Fireball spell that burst the siren’s magic shield like a bubble. It’s flames, however, merely grazed the extremely wet skin of the siren. Because of that, Syna immediately sniped her with her rifle, having her head simply explode.

Merely few seconds later I understood we made a mistake. We fell into another trap. The siren was there to stop us, and have Firewing show herself in a way that left no doubts as to where she was. Once that happened, two Starborn Voidbearers phased up from the floor beside her. Each of them were Dead of the Extinction. Three-legged and three-armed beings, with long stick-like body and three eyes (each facing a completely different direction). Their defining features was the ability to face through solid matter (which they used to hide beneath the ground) and the fact that their body temperature was pretty close to absolute zero.

Firewing’s legs froze immediately - she simply wasn’t prepared for them, so her defensive magic failed. But she was still an archmage. Her legs shattered - but she cast new spells even before her body fell to the ground, right into the Voidbearers’ sphere of influence. First of the enemy Dead was almost immediately incinerated. Another spell had levitate her body to avoid freezing. Third one stabilized her medical condition, preventing the thermal shock caused by the temperature (and further physical damage) and suppressing pain. That was some quality high-speed casting, if I ever seen one. Then again, most of that spells were already anchored to her body (something you had to be an archmage to be able to do), she just altered them slightly to fit the situation and fired.

The other Voidbearer continued its attack on her. She lost her right hand as her opponent grabbed her. She immediately fired another spell that essentially chopped of her hand to prevent the damage from spreading, and the melt the enemy with some close-contact fire magic spell.

At this point, we were being pushed back again. And badly. Firewing was immobilized and busy trying to keep herself alive. Our line almost collapsed due to the siren’s wails, and even know, the aftershock of the damage and debuffs it caused remained. Also, more and more of the enemies showed up.

Then an adventurer came running and shouting to me.

***

Turned out, I was played again. The initial counterattack of the dreadnoughts and death eye against the main cavern was supposed to make me prioritize the military part of the headquarters. And it succeeded - all our elites were here, in the south. Then enemy located and incapacitated (mostly) Firewing, our most powerful being.

Once we pushed the enemy back, the main counterattack started. A strike team of five dreadnoughts, and almost thirty Abyssals emerged from the civilian section of the headquarters, supported by some hexcasters… and a siren. The forces we left there were immediately overwhelmed - they simply wasn’t enough of them to hold the ground. The penitent necromancers summoned as many undead as they could, at least slowing down the attack.

Another group of enemies - including some voidbearers - showed up in the barracks. Weaker than our squad that was cleaning that place up, but strong enough to ensure that our only potential reserves were tied up and I couldn’t redirect them to bolster the main attack group (that was losing ground inch by inch), nor to clean the mess in the main cavern.

What’s worse, the enemy seized the boats. It couldn’t go any worse than that. Around 50 people on our side, but only 30 in working conditions. And we were pretty much pushed back into the first hall, with enemy pushing towards us from all sides at once.

“FIREWING!” I shouted to her. She looked back at me, still floating around and expending a lot of magic on that. I pointed towards one of the rooms behind us, with no enemies coming from there. She understood.

Thankfully, the teleport room was merely deactivated by something. She managed to reactivate the teleport, while we were slowly retreating towards the room. Then we fled, only to find ourselves out in the cold. Really bad cold.

Fucking Dragonspine winters.

***

We crawled back to the Hold, seriously pissed.

It’s me who’s supposed to be the smartest one around! It’s not the ‘this change is actually sorta refreshing’ situation. It’s the ‘FUCK. YOU. WHOEVER YOU ARE.’ situation. I super hate it. Worst part? We lost even more people, and all for nothing. Enemy probably has some sort of Dark Gate or Dark Fissure or whatever else they conjured during the hundreds of years that passed with Pentagram holding the headquarters. Any casualty is absolutely meaningless. Ours in the meantime?

Thirteen people lost, including seven permanently. Pretty much every other person participating in the raid was injured to a degree. Needless to say, the number of people irritated with my leadership grew, especially among the adventurers. Good thing they were too shocked with the battle’s aftermath that none of them decided to make a run for it during the trip back to the Hold. Then again, the winter could be a blessing here. Or it could be an effect of the Beacon’s Morale Raise ability.

After we come back, my impending migraine grew worse. Our attacks managed to inform the enemies that the game was on. The counterattack during the second assault was also supposed to seize the boats. The enemy figured out some magical protection, enough to go past the cathedral without dying. They failed to capture our advance base in the cathedral (they were still massively by the direct Yhrezerach’s presence there), but they’ve spread around the underground rivers like a plague. A group of them sneaked through the northern one, right into the center of the village. Thankfully, they were repelled by the adventurers and soldiers off-work.

We went on a defensive for a while, recuperating from the casualties and hoping that the enemy would just stay in the headquarters, now that we’ve succeeded in retaking (or sinking) most of the boats. Unfortunately, not a chance. Three days later we’ve narrowly managed to repel an all-out assault on the cathedral.

It was pretty obviously an another reconnaissance attempt. The enemy wanted to check out if we changed how many people we kept around the cathedral - if it fell, the Pentagram forces would swarm the newly retaken agricultural zone. What’s worse, it would connect its domain with the mines still held by Zhkrrk servants. By seizing the easternmost part of the inhabited zone.

Not to mention the fact that Leria (if she returns) would absolutely kick me out from the Hold (naked) and tell me to go to Ambryxis and back like that as a punishment for allowing the Pentagram to seize the cathedral. Yhrezerach would be equally pissed off, even if more reserved in his punishments.

As expected, another assault happened two days later. This time I’ve managed to outhink the enemy commander for a first time in a while. Cathedral attack was supposed to persuade me that it’s a key point of the enemy strategy and bolster its defences. While the enemy target, in fact, was the the inhabited zone. Enemy decided to pass by the cathedral and assault the inhabited zone directly. Their attack was an absolute disaster however, as I expected that and had Firewing install more of her shockwave spells near the tunnel exit. Enemy entered the village in a state of absolute disarray, and was quickly annihilated by a rain of offensive spells and projectiles. The few that turned back mostly didn’t survive another pass before the cathedral.

For a while I wanted to launch an immediate counterattack, but I checked the number of boats we’ve managed to assemble in the meantime, and… welp. I’m not risking another disaster. Rushing things is a prime reason for disasters.

Three days later came another attack - this time the enemy wanted to push through to the eastern edge of the inhabited zone, once again ignoring the cathedral base. Unfortunately for them, we’ve reinforced it with Firewing’s spells a day prior. Unfortunately for us, we’ve had to spread our forces between three places now (cathedral, village and the crossroad lake to the east that came under attack), and the last part had the lowest priority. The battle raged for an hour before the enemy retreated. We had dozens of wounded, but only three people died. Seven more were going to spend a while in the Firewing’s improvised hospital, though.

Another attack was going to happen three days later, but the Crow decided to do something. He returned three hours later, covered in blood that wasn’t his own. No attack that day, and we had time to prepare ourselves for another engagement properly. A lot of wounded people managed to be back in shape. Crow refused to admit what happen.

I expected another day three days later, but the three days period seemed to have been a ruse. They attacked two days later. However I’ve placed Syna with the anti-tank gun in front of the cathedral, with Firewing there to suppress the sound (using it in the cave was… a risk). Most of the rafts were sank, with water currents bringing a vast assembly of daemons and the Dead of Pentagram right into the shockwave spell barrier. They were going to be back for another brawn few days later, so it was a hollow victory.

Our rafts were almost ready. My questions on ‘how the fuck do they make them so fast’ went without Yhrezerach’s answer. And then, Leria returned.