39. Invasion

This might still get few tweaks in the final RR version, but I wanted to get it out for you guys. Enjoy!

Master Alchemist Theresa stared at the letter, reading it for the third time as she ignored the alarms sounding from the breach near the western walls. The guards would be fighting kobolds there – nothing serious in her estimation. If an actual elder dragon was going to come for the city, it would have done so already. Besides, what could a deep dragon possibly want so close to the surface, anyway?

Not that she believed the fantastical reports coming out of the Adventurers’ Guild in the first place. Those fools had died somehow, to be sure, and they were humiliated. But that didn’t mean there had to be an elder dragon. They’d likely gone in completely unprepared to deal with a moderately organized enemy supported by mind sorcerers. Now, they were humiliated. They would call in the army, storm the dungeon and wipe out the kobolds. Then they would claim the dragon made a strategic retreat, or something similarly difficult to prove.

No, what was serious was how first the Underkeepers and now the Mages’ Guild were taking advantage of this situation. First, that half-baked Underkeeper archmage managed to seize control of half the guard and started turning her Guild’s own charter against her, demanding non-standard elixirs in ridiculous quantities with practically no notice. Then, within hours, she’d learned that most of the city’s supply of castrum root had already been bought up. They’d barely been able to make three-hundred doses with what remained. Ed must have known she wouldn’t be able to meet such a quota.

Her first thought was that the Underkeepers had bought it up, but now… she tapped the letter.

Master Alchemist Theresa

It has come to my attention that your guild is experiencing a shortage in some critical reagents, namely castrum root. As a token of goodwill and solidarity, I’m sending our guild herbalist’s supply to you free of charge. I’ve also taken the liberty of contacting our supplier on your behalf, and would be happy to arrange a meeting for you in the coming days.

With highest regards,

Archmage Iriala, Halfbridge Mages’ Guild Administrator

The wording was friendly, but the message was not. The tiny bag of castrum root sitting on her desk was barely enough for ten doses, and served more as proof that the old hag had access to the stuff than anything else. Iriala was putting her into a corner, but she wasn’t a fool. She was a diviner – of course she would have known what Thurdred was about to pull and seized the opportunity to make some money. Her “supplier” would probably just be a guild-affiliated merchant that was cutting her in.

But, that was better than the Underkeepers buying up and destroying the reagents to try to take down her entire branch. No amount of money was worth losing guild’s exclusivity rights in the city. That would create a safe haven for non-guild alchemists, and that was a threat to the guild all throughout the realm in the long term.

As long as Iriala kept her prices somewhat reasonable for the circumstances, it wouldn’t get nasty and everyone could walk away satisfied.

–--------

Leaving a few of the guards behind to watch the sealed tunnel, Bernt followed Kustov out into the city. If the kobolds were properly coordinating an assault, it might mean that the dragon had decided to move. Even if it didn’t, it suggested that the enemy was getting better organized. Regardless, the geomancer had decided that they should go and reinforce the remaining breaches rather than waste time watching one that wasn’t likely to be reopened in the immediate future.

He could feel Jori’s presence over toward the west, probably near to the main breach. He wasn’t sure what she might be doing over there, but he supposed it was just as well that she wasn’t here in the thick of things. Who knows how the guards might react.

Just like when the original breach had formed, traffic was moving away from the sound of the trumpets, trying to get away from any active fighting. This left them moving against the tide, so to speak, trying to get to the next closest breach. It was the only one besides the main breach that offered a clear route to the street level – they had burrowed out of the side of a hill in a small park near the city-center.

As they approached the site, a roaring sound filled the air and a nearby house went up in flames. Surprised shouts sounded from inside, followed by screams. Acting on reflex, Bernt immediately raised his pyromancer’s wand and controlled the fire, drawing it down and trying to extinguish it by spreading its heat out and away from the flames. Killing a fire was much harder than making one, but he had a lot of practice. It was one of the first things any aspiring pyromancer had to learn.

Doing his best to maintain the spell, Bernt hummed a tune, focusing an additional mana flow into an aeromancy spell. Like most people who had a gift for fire, Bernt also excelled at air magic. It had always felt natural, and didn’t tax his concentration too much. At the same time, it was just never quite as exciting to work with as fire. But he was no slouch, and there was a lot to work with when casting outdoors like this.

It took more power than he would have liked, but the air thinned around the building in question, bringing the flames down lower. The building began to smoke more as the fire was smothered, and about twenty seconds later, Bernt released the spell. He felt like he’d been scraped raw from the inside.

He wasn’t used to moving that much energy around.

Looking around for Kustov and the guards, he realized that they had gone on without him, probably to deal with whatever had caused the fire in the first place. He was torn for a moment. Should he go into the building to make sure everyone was alright?

No. He shook his head and hurried after the others. He wasn’t a healer, and he could hear fighting up ahead. As he turned the corner, he found himself standing on a battlefield.

Small knots of soldiers fought a growing mob of kobolds who rapidly moved to encircle them. As Bernt watched, a group of three guards went down, swarmed in seconds. Where was Kustov? And where was their support? There should have already been at least one mage and probably an adventurer or two on watch here.

But there wasn’t time.

Bernt raised his wand and focused on the breach itself, which was still vomiting more kobolds every second, and started casting. A roiling orb of flames formed in the air in front of him. If they couldn’t stem the flow, they were going to be overwhelmed here. Before he could finish his spell, though, the entire thing closed like a gigantic mouth, swallowing the kobolds that were climbing out.

Right – Kustov would have been thinking the same thing. Changing his target, Bernt found what looked like the center of the mob and unleashed his spell. It looked like a fireball, but quite a bit larger. That made sense, considering how similar the spells were. But, where fireballs were meant to take out a single target, this was a spell for war, usually thrown in a volley by as many as fifty pyromancers to threaten entire battalions of soldiers. The spell, called firestorm, only really reached its full potential when cast concurrently by many mages at once, but it wasn’t ineffective in this form, either. It was the capstone of the basic pyromancer qualification – since pyromancers practically always moved directly to the military from the academy.

Bernt hadn’t cast it in two years, but this was the time.

The massive flaming projectile roared into the mass of kobolds, where it unraveled into a spinning vortex of fire so intense that Bernt felt it scorch his face from where he stood. Kobolds screamed and died in a wide area, several paces around the impact point, and others pushed away from the fire, trying to escape the pain of more minor burns.

Bernt’s vision blurred and his head swam for a moment. Casting two powerful spells like this in such quick succession took it out of him. Technically, he shouldn’t have even attempted it, throwing too many big spells around in a short time could cause damage to his spirit, weakening his ability to concentrate and making spellcasting painful. If the damage was bad, the weakening effect could even be permanent. He could feel it, but it didn’t seem like he’d done anything serious to himself this time.

Just then, a cry went up from some of the kobolds, and he could see one pointing toward him. Bernt’s blood froze as heads turned to look at him. He raised his wand and cast a fire dart at the group. It worked, eliciting a scream from one of the kobolds as the flame burned through the scales over its ribs, but it hurt Bernt, too. His right arm hung at his side, tingling painfully as if he’d just banged the inside of his elbow against something. He’d bungled the mana flows a bit, probably, and strained himself as a result. If he wanted to cast like this, he needed to get stronger.

The kobolds charged at him. Bernt activated his thorn skin amulet and looked for a way out, trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of thorns pricking his neck.

There was a group of guards nearby, but not close enough to help him. Besides, they had their own problems to deal with. He raised his wand again and tried to think of a spell that might save his life right now. He would only get one.

The entire group of kobolds disintegrated into a spray of body parts and gore. Bernt flinched unconsciously, but not at the spectacle. It was the sound. An ear-shattering, deranged laugh boomed through the park at an obviously unnatural volume.

In front of him, Bernt watched the entire kobold incursion fall apart, brought down by a single, large fighter holding a bloodied sword in one hand and a broken spear in the other. Split by Bernt’s undersized firestorm, the kobolds had reformed into smaller groups, each going after the weakest targets they could find. Over the course of maybe thirty seconds, the madman worked his way through group after group, not breaking stride for even a moment. It didn’t look graceful, the way Furin or Oren did when they were fighting. He just ran right at the enemy and swung at them as hard and fast as he could. And that was very hard and fast.

When the last group of kobolds was down, the man stopped, looking around for more targets as he gasped little cackling laughs between his heavy breaths. He was covered in wounds, most relatively light, but a few looked serious. He bled quite heavily from a deep cut on his arm, and he had a puncture wound in his side. Even as he watched, though, the blood stopped dripping from his hand, and several of the smaller cuts on his face and hands just… closed up.

Bernt gaped. He’d never seen a berserker in action before, but there weren’t a lot of ways to explain what he was looking at.

“Do we have a healer? Who has potions?”

It was one of the guards – one of theirs, from the first breach earlier. She was on her knees, leaning over another armored form and pushing down on his leg as blood seeped out between her fingers. Another guard was tying his belt around the leg in a makeshift tourniquet.

Kustov. That was Kustov.

Bernt hurried over. He stumbled over the body of a kobold and almost cut himself on the spearhead that stuck out of its back. Getting there, he pulled out a minor healing potion – all he could get considering his relationship with the alchemists – and handed it to the woman. She accepted it, grimacing a little at it.

“Ah, same shit as we get on watch.”

She poured it into Kustov’s mouth. The dwarf wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t exactly all there, either. A few moments later, a bit of color returned to his face, and his breathing evened out. As long as they made sure that he didn’t bleed out in the next few minutes, he would probably be fine.

There was a lot of blood on the ground. Looking up and around, Bernt realized that they’d lost a lot of people, and many more were injured by the looks of it.

To his relief, he saw several of the guards produce potions and bandages to see to their injured colleagues. Bernt wasn’t carrying very many potions himself.

A hand descended on his shoulder.

“Underkeeper?” a smooth, neutral voice said. Bernt turned and found himself facing the gigantic berserker, who looked completely calm now, like a totally different person, really. “That was a pretty good spell. Can you do it again? We should get to the main breach – that’s probably where the biggest push will be.”

Bernt shook his head. “I can’t. I injured myself with that one – I’ll get my colleague over there to headquarters and see if I can find anyone else there to help.”

The berserker frowned, but nodded. “Alright. I’ll update your commander. Send anyone you can find there, alright?”

Bernt nodded back, but the berserker was already running off, not even bothering to try to rally any of the guards. Bernt decided not to worry about it. He needed to see to Kustov.