41. Invasion pt 3

Kustov, as it turned out, was going to be just fine – though not necessarily very soon. He’d taken a deep puncture wound to the leg, and that tourniquet had probably saved his life. That healing potion probably helped a little, too, but Bernt doubted that it would have been enough.

By the time they reached the main guard station, Kustov was mostly back to his senses and cursing up a storm. The wound wasn’t closed, but Bernt supposed that the nicked artery that had almost killed the dwarf was at least sealed. 

“I don’t care if he’s stable, we need all the mages up and fighting – especially that one! ”Palina, the senior guardswoman in charge, was furiously shouting at the quartermaster, demanding a better healing potion for Kustov. “I get why they decided to leave the breaches open, but that only works if we can actually repel all of the attacks. I don’t know where Janus is, or if he’s even closing them now, so I want Kustov here on his feet now!”

Grumbling, the quartermaster turned around and vanished into a small storage room for a few seconds before reemerging with a standard healing potion. It wasn’t as good as a superior healing potion, but those could fix almost anything within a few minutes. They also cost less than half as much as superior potion, which made them the healing solution of choice for the military.

“Uh… why did they leave the breaches open?” Bernt asked as Palina handed the potion over to Kustov, who downed it, still muttering curses to himself in dwarvish. “The kobolds would have kept digging new ones, sure, but it would have been a lot harder for them to attack from multiple points like this, right?.”

Kustov grimaced as he loosened the tourniquet and removed it from his leg. “It makes them easier to predict,” he explained. “Or that was the idea, probably. And I’m sure the army’s planning to use those same tunnels to go in – might have been orders from the general. Whatever the case, our diviners predicted every significant attack so far, as far as I know. They probably thought it wasn’t a big risk.”

Bernt stared blankly, but then shook his head. “What do we do now? I overdid it in that fight – I can’t cast.”

The other mage grunted in acknowledgment and fumbled at a pouch at his belt. A moment later, he held out a small vial. “Drink this. It’s not going to fix anything, but it’ll kill the pain. If you stick to small spells and take your time, you’ll be fine. Don’t overdo it or you might cripple yourself. Just cover my back and let me do the heavy work.”

“Thanks,” Bernt said as he accepted the potion a bit apprehensively. “I’ll pay you back.” 

What counted as a small spell?

The dwarf rose and put weight on his wounded leg, testing it out. It held and he nodded to Palina and the quartermaster.

“I’m ready to go. How many guards can you spare for me? And did anyone remember to grab my hammer?”

–----------

The first breach they visited was completely fine. Dayle was manning it, and he’d managed to slaughter the entire attacking force before his supporting guards, or the paladin who was supposed to shield him even had a chance to get involved. The two mages closed the breach easily, and Dayle’s group joined them to go looking for trouble.

The battle went on for hours as they rushed from breach to breach, closing them up even as new ones opened in the sewers. Some came up directly underneath buildings, much to the dismay of the residents battened down inside. In one case, a house collapsed down onto one unlucky kobold tunneling crew that had undermined a load-bearing wall, closing the breach before it even formed. As the only one qualified to help, Kustov had sent Dayle and his team ahead while he helped the survivors out of the rubble, and Bernt and the guards escorted them up to the nearest properly defended guard station.

Bernt did his best to cast as conservatively as possible, only attacking kobolds who managed to get in close enough to threaten Kustov, himself, or his charges. Despite his armor and melee weapon, the geomancer kept back, concentrating instead on closing tunnels and fouling the terrain for entire groups of kobolds as they tried to break through barricades and swarm into the streets.

In more than one place, the defenses had been breached entirely, leading to running battles in the streets. Fortunately, they weren’t working alone. Teams of mixed adventurers, guards, underkeepers, guild mages, and the occasional civilian passed each other on the streets, trying to coordinate and exchange information with each other as best they could to cover all of the enemy approaches.

From one such team, Bernt heard that Uriah had single-handedly cleared a breach by flooding it with sewage. From another, they heard that Janus, the most powerful geomancer in the city, hadn't joined in to close the breaches because he was single handedly holding up the city wall against hundreds of enemy diggers who’d managed to undermine significant portions of it without anyone noticing – not until several sections started to crumble at the same time. He was under heavy attack by regular kobolds as well as a few sorcerers, but was holding out with the support of several other adventurers. There was no telling how long the fight would take.

For a moment, Bernt wondered where his party was right now. Were they out here, fighting? Or had they maybe taken a quest outside the city? He hoped, for their sake, that it was the latter.

Jori, Bernt knew, was supporting Iriala much the same way that he was backing up Kustov. He didn’t get a lot of details through the familiar bond, except that Jori, for some reason, was growing increasingly fascinated by Iriala’s glasses, stealing glances at them every few seconds. He’d have to ask her what that was all about. It was also enough to give him a more general idea of what was going on when they got close enough to each other. The imp was accompanying Iriala toward the main breach, stopping to fight a few times along the way as they encountered the enemy. To his surprise, Iriala didn’t use any big spells to fight – instead she cast magic missiles at an impossible pace, each one finding its mark unerringly, as if the spell itself knew where its target was going to be. It looked completely effortless. 

Bernt lost track of time after a while. He grew numb to the sight of blood and the sounds of screams, too tired to worry about them anymore. He just followed behind Kustov and watched for danger. One breach after another. 

Sometimes, rarely, a messenger would find them with instructions, sending them to this spot or that to do what they’d already been doing. He didn’t know how long it went on, but he was exhausted and he could feel the numb, tingling pain shooting down his arm and his entire right side now. 

He started seeing other people running down the streets. People wearing matching armor and green and white uniforms. They were mostly humans, and they obviously knew their business. They moved confidently and in large groups, sweeping through the streets and the sewers simultaneously. Who were they? Bernt had walked several blocks more before he finally managed to assemble the information into a coherent thought.

The army had arrived.

Finally.

Bernt was looking for kobolds so intently as they walked that he didn’t realize where they actually were until they were standing in view of the command post at the main breach. Ed was standing there, framed in the doorway to the command post with Iriala on one side and a severe-looking man in his early forties on the other. He wore a crisp green and white uniform and a sword, but no armor. A gold tassel was attached to his left shoulder. That made him a royal of some kind.

Concentrating on his bond for a moment, Bernt could see that Jori was inside the building behind them, keeping out of sight. He had no idea how she’d gotten in there, but he was glad that she was keeping a low profile.

The breach itself was a mess. The hole in the street that led down to it was almost twice as wide as before, and the wall behind it now sagged perilously inward. The barricades were nowhere in evidence. Bernt couldn’t tell if they had been removed or if they were buried under all the kobold bodies and debris. 

He could clearly see that they’d taken losses too, but the kobolds had it far, far worse.

They were winning.

Bernt’s head swam, and he sat down hard. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Kustov’s face. The dwarf was saying something.

“...alright…?”

Bernt nodded. He wasn’t hurt. He just… couldn’t think straight.

A short while later, his mind cleared again. Somewhat, anyway.

There were soldiers standing in the street now. Ranks upon ranks of them, holding spears and wearing short swords on their hips. They were just standing there, waiting.

Bernt heaved himself back to his feet. There was a shout to his left, over by the breach. Men and women in guards’ uniforms climbed up to street level alongside a heavily armored man dragging a massive two-handed sword, a cleric in a badly stained white robe, and an extremely bedraggled-looking woman in gray robes – Fiora.

As they emerged, the remaining guards and adventurers outside the tunnels fired arrows and threw rocks down to slow the emerging kobolds who started to push out again after the retreating defenders immediately.

But they weren’t just kobolds. A few of the creatures had wings, and one was much taller and broader than the others, carrying a runed staff of some kind – clearly a sorcerer, but different from those that Bernt had encountered in the dungeon before.

The guards kept retreating, backing up further until the kobolds had control of the entire breach, past where the barricades had been before. He would have to move soon, at this rate. 

Bernt couldn’t understand why. What was the point of letting the enemy gain a foothold like this? Why wasn’t the army fighting them yet?

The big kobold shouted something and raised his staff as kobolds streamed past him. He was casting something, Bernt was sure. 

Bernt summoned every last bit of focus he could, raised his wand and cast. He didn’t know why the army, the guards, or Ed was allowing this to happen, but he couldn’t just stand by and let that horrible creature finish its spell. 

His fire dart flew like an ember from a fire and struck the sorcerer directly in the chest, where it did absolutely nothing that Bernt could see. He didn’t know if he was just that tired, or if the big sorcerer had some kind of special resistance to fire. It didn’t matter. He’d been completely useless. 

Bernt couldn’t understand it. What was happening? Where were the archmages?

Just as he had the thought, a spell struck the creature with a noise like cracking thunder. Bernt hadn’t gotten a good look, but he thought it was a magic missile – If it could be called that. The force projectile was longer than his arm shone with an incandescent blue light. Bernt couldn’t even begin to guess how much force was bound into the spell.

The kobolds that were still streaming past it were flung outward like rag dolls, slamming against other kobolds, the wall, and even a few of the retreating guards. The sorcerer was just… gone.

Before he could fully process what he was seeing a massive half-dome of force went up, locking the entire kobold advance inside. Bernt looked around in bewilderment and spotted the source of the spell a moment later. An entire team of ten uniformed mages with white bands around their left arms were channeling the spell in unison, each holding an identically carved straight staff.

Standing right next to them were Ed and Iriala, though only Ed was obviously casting right now. He was weaving his pipe in an abstruse pattern – something complex, considering what the man could do with a simple handwave.

He finished the spell with a simple downward-flick of the pipe and the ground shook with a deep, bone-rattling boom. That was followed by a silence that was only broken by the clacking of some stray rocks that rained down toward the breach from the sagging wall, and bounced off the shield for a few moments before the team of force mages released it.

The kobolds were… dead. They were very, very dead. They lay completely motionless, strewn over the ground, not even twitching. Nothing came up behind them.

What kind of spell was that?

Bernt was still trying to puzzle it out as another group of mages advanced on the breach – these wearing brown armbands. They were geomancers, Bernt realized as they, in the space of a few moments, completely repaired the broken-down wall and cleared the path down into the dungeon. As soon as a gap was opened up, ranks upon ranks of soldiers started marching down into the dungeon, taking the fight to the enemy.

It was over. Finally.