The shield bearer slamd his tower shield into the middle scorpion’s barb and rode the shove, skidding backward until his heel caught a step. He pivoted off it and chopped a short sword across the tail’s underside. Sparks jumped.
Wind howled. The turret mage slashed the air and dropped a hamr of pressure. It struck the left scorpion’s carapace, flattening its front legs and grinding grit under its belly. The beast hissed and crabbed sideways, tail lancing at the parapet. Stone geysered; the mage flung himself flat as the sting whipped past his ear and left a furrow through the rlons.
"Burn it!" the bowwoman coughed, pressing two shafts to the string and loosing both. They flared midflight, catching Fire Mage’s blaze like a sail. The flaming arrows kissed the middle scorpion’s eye ridge and guttered out, leaving only soot.
A Goliath arrived. He didn’t leap; he stepped up onto the shattered wall and down into the lane, each footfall a punctuation. Two more shouldered through the breach behind him, broad shoulders scraping stone. The first carried no weapon. He didn’t need one. He reached for the shield-bearer.
The shield-bearer t him with a bellow and a driving bash that would have cracked ribs on anything living. The Goliath’s chest took it like a dock takes a tide. He shoved back with one hand. The shield-bearer’s boots lost purchase. He stumbled, caught himself on a pillar, and set again, jaw hard.
The Earth Mage threw both hands forward. The lane bucked and rolled like the back of a waking beast, pitching the front line of undead off rhythm. The center scorpion scrabbled for purchase, tail lashing blind; the Knight with the spear took the opening and drove a thrust into the soft notch under a leg plate. Ichor spattered his cheek, hot and oily. He grinned through it—then the scorpion’s nearest claw cut across and sent him cartwheeling into a wall. The system caught him before the stone did; white light swallowed him with his grin still there, turned rueful.
"Six!" the bowwoman shouted, counting living allies, not enemies.
The second Goliath stord the ramp with a roar. His charge didn’t care for terrain or tactics—he simply arrived like a boulder.
The wind mage barely avoided the swing. A follow-up gust deflected the worst of it, but the Goliath’s fist still clipped his side and sent him flying from the turret, slamming him into the lower roof in a crunch of clay tiles. He didn’t rise and soon vanished.
The others watched in horror. Two gone in under a minute.
"Pull back!" the black-robed boy scread, abandoning his chalk and bounding down the stairs.
"No!" the shield-bearer shouted, spitting blood. "We give them the gate and they’ll climb to the core. We hold here!"
But even as he said it, the third scorpion completed its arc. Its tail whipped through a ward window and shattered the caster’s sigil ring with a wet pop. The caster’s mouth opened in a scream, but no sound ca. He had disappeared into light too.
"Five!" the archer croaked.
The bowwoman beside her set her teeth and loosed another shaft, this one tipped with blue fla. It struck true—burying in the seam of a Goliath’s elbow and exploding outward with enough force to stagger him sideways. The Goliath grunted, swatted the burning arm as if it were a fly, and continued forward.
The shield-bearer didn’t retreat and advanced.
With a cry that scraped his lungs raw, he lunged, shield-first, into the Goliath’s chest again. This ti he didn’t try to shove—the impact was a decoy. As tal t flesh, his short sword ca around low and stabbed into the Goliath’s inner thigh. The blade sank half its length before a aty hand caught his wrist.
The Goliath’s other hand smashed down.
The blow would’ve crushed a lesser man.
But the shield-bearer twisted at the last instant, rolling his shoulder into the impact. Instead of a shattered skull, the fist drove him to one knee, his gauntlet skidding sparks along the stone. Blood filled his mouth. He spit and roared back in the sa breath, twisting the blade deeper into the Goliath’s thigh.
The undead colossus grunted. It lifted its other arm again to finish the job.
Before the second blow landed, another Goliath stepped through the breach.
This one was broader than the rest, its shoulders thick as vault doors and arms corded with unnatural tension. It didn’t hesitate. As the shield-bearer struggled to rise beneath the first’s looming hand, the second brought its heel down on his sword arm with the dull, final crack of bone yielding.
The man scread—then vanished in a flash of system light, recalled before the killing blow could follow.
"Four!" the bowwoman yelled, chest heaving.
The second Goliath turned its head slowly toward her voice.
She fired.
The arrow split the air with a crack, glowing with wind-sigil guidance. It pierced the Goliath’s cheek—and stopped there, quivering, buried no deeper than a knuckle.
The undead blinked once.
Then it advanced.
She stepped back—then again, hitting the wall.
"Keep firing!" the archer shouted from the upper level. His voice cracked with panic. "Keep firing!"
"Do it yourself!" she snapped, notching another arrow.
But it was too late.
Two more Goliaths were inside.
The third one swept through what remained of the outer ward. Debris flew like shrapnel. Another defender cried out as a chunk of masonry cracked into his temple. He was down.
"Three!" the bowwoman hissed.
Behind her, the stairwell collapsed.
The black-robed boy had done it himself—triggering the failsafe ward to delay the inevitable breach to the upper level, where the core chamber pulsed like a heart.
The last archer loosed a wild shot at one of the Rock-Steel Scorpions circling the ruins of the inner lane. The arrow skipped off its armored carapace with a shrill ping. The creature didn’t even slow. Its segnted tail reared, tip gleaming with venom sheen.
The archer barely had ti to curse before the tail thrust through the wall.
"Two!" the bowwoman barked, eyes wild.
User Comments
0 comments from readers