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Aster popped her head out of the backpack and mirrored Matt’s sentiment. “No fight? No fun.”
She shot a glare at Annie, who shrugged. “Sorry. It was easy. Also, I doubt this is the only center of operations. It’s just too small. I’m sure there are others out there.”
Emily said, “Maybe we can get points for that, but this was a colossal waste of time.” She quietly grumbled, “It’s gonna take a week or more for this dye to wash out.”
Matt agreed, it felt shitty that they had gone through so much preparation to get nothing.
Together, they walked to the small fort and informed the leader that there was a bandit camp under his nose.
He looked green at the discovery, and none of them bothered to comfort him. The man was in for a talking to at a minimum, or getting sacked at worst. His best and only defense was that it was a hilly area, but an enemy encampment not even half a mile away from his fort was inexcusable.
They were halfway back to the city when Aster started sniffing, hard.
“Fire? Fire!”
At her message, they flew higher until they were able to see the curvature of the planet. At that altitude, they were able to see the medium and large forts that were part of the circular protection around the city being besieged, bypassed, and set ablaze.
From their vantage point, they also saw the mass of people moving through the anti-flying zones on foot.
This was a full invasion.
They didn’t need to speak, and rushed forward to the city perimeter, where they encountered its anti-flying formation. They immediately dismounted and sprinted for the entrance. They weren’t the only ones. A message was being sent to everyone in the vicinity to either retreat to the city before they were surrounded, or retreat to one of the large or medium forts.
Reinforcements were already pouring in from the neutral city, according to the Pather network. An urgent call went out to everyone ambulatory to get to a teleporter and move to this city, before the queendom could set up the spatial locks.
Once those formations went up, all teleportation would be shut down as the space inside the city got locked down. After that, the defenders would be on their own.
The six of them ran up the stairs to the fifty-foot tall walls, and peered out over the battlements. Together, they stood and watched as the large fort in their view was simply surrounded and bypassed. In fifteen minutes, the front gate was surrounded, and a thin wall of people encircled the city. They had even more concentrated numbers around the city’s other entrance that Matt could see from his vantage point.
The city had four at each cardinal direction, and the queendom forces seemed to be moving quickly to block all of them off. Small teams moved out to chase down any kingdom teams who strayed too close.
With a noticeable rumble, the door under their feet slammed shut.
“Well, f**k a duck. This was s**t timing.” Annie spit over the edge of the fort after saying her piece.
“What?” Matt looked to her and said, “This is amazing timing. Who knows if we would’ve been able to join if we missed the initial start. We’re gonna earn a s**t load of points for this.”
Annie didn’t look convinced. “I doubt it. There are thousands of people, and we’ll need to outperform them all. We’re gonna get like twenty points for this.”
Her sister slapped her shoulder. “Come on. We’re far better than that. Matt and I can probably hold this entire city ourselves. Easy peasy.”
He didn’t quite agree with that statement, but before he could retort, Conor started to strip out of his armor. Matt and everyone else, realizing what he was doing, followed suit.
None of them wanted to fight an important battle with gear other than their own. Matt was faster than everyone except Annie, who also wore light armor. So, he moved toward Conor and helped the man with his full plate armor. By the time they were finished, the rest were also done, and the six of them moved their borrowed gear into their spatial bags.
They looked out beyond the ramparts and watched as a trebuchet was assembled at the edge of the queendom formations. Piece after piece was pulled out of spatial storage containers and rapidly assembled.
In under two minutes, an earth mage created a boulder and placed it in the sling. The missile was instantly slung at the city wall.
The first shot was way short, so they calibrated the siege engine then launched a second. This one looked like it would miss to their right, but as it reached a dozen feet from the wall, it slammed into an invisible barrier. The city’s shielding flickered into visibility for a moment, but as the boulder shattered and fell, it quickly dissipated.
Everyone on the wall flinched and instinctively ducked down. A mage launched a [Fireball] at the attackers, but they were well out of range for a single Tier 8 spell. It traveled only a hundred feet before the mana sustaining it weakened, and it sputtered out like a candle in a tornado.
It didn’t even reach a quarter the distance to the enemy forces.
Having found their range, the attackers adjusted the counterweight slightly and lobbed a flaming chunk of stone at the wall. Unlike last time, this stone hit at the top of the wall. Or it would have, if the shielding didn’t block the attack.
It still made Matt wince. They were going to run out of mana eventually. Unless Matt kept the city charged…He shook that idea off; he wasn’t going to reveal more than his Concept.
A ballista next to them fired, but the large bolt didn’t even reach halfway to the line of trebuchets that were being put together.
They got a message from Juni a moment after the impact. “You’re here? Good. Take control of the Pathers. Please. Organize them into QRFs and get them ready to reinforce the walls or repel wall climbers.”
Liz started issuing commands, getting the quick reaction forces set up. Matt asked, “What’s the situation? And how many reinforcements can we expect?”
“Depends on how many we can shove through before the anti-teleporting formation goes up. I doubt you have a spell that goes that far, but if you see them setting it up, try and break things.”
“What about the prince?”
There was a pause before Juni’s response. “He will be gathering an overland response force and harrying the attackers from the rear.”
Matt almost said that the man was a coward since he had stayed in the rear during the golem battle as well. But this time, things were different. If the prince died, they would be out of a commander for two weeks. And worse than that, if he died, they wouldn’t be able to spend points for the duration either. An outside force able to keep pressure on the enemy wasn’t a bad idea when he thought about it.
It just left a bitter taste in Matt’s mouth. Still, it gave him everything he needed to know to start feeding information into his AI.
After two minutes and nearly 10,000 mana, he had an answer. At least for some of their problems.
He called Juni back up. “Get me a mana cannon.”
“What?”
Realizing he hadn’t explained at all, Matt backtracked. “If I have one of the siege cannons, I can tamper with the runes a bit and increase the range.” He debated explaining fully but, in the end decided to be forthright. “Warning though, it will significantly decrease the lifespan of the cannon, and its stability will be s**t after a few shots.”
Juni answered him after a worryingly long silence. “How many shots are we talking about?”
- Writer
