The Forsaken Hero

”Attack!”

Commander Barron’s battle cry split the skies, his wyvern leading the rest of the Death Wings in a reckless dive toward us. Similar shouts joined with the earthshaking charge of the church’s infantry, whose leveled spears and shields advance through the outer courtyard. Bethiv led the majority of our troops to the gate and headed them, the neat and orderly lines collapsing in a pitched battle.

With the gates secure with their vigilante presence, I turned my attention to the sky. The few mages and archers we had launched a volley skyward, picking off several wyverns and their riders. But most screamed right through the onslaught, relying on their rapidly accelerating velocity and enchanted armor to keep them alive long enough to make it to the ground.

The first wyvern landed with the force of a meteor, barely bothering to flare its wings to catch its fall. The cobblestone courtyard ruptured beneath the impact, throwing fist-sized bits of earth and stone in all directions. The Blade Ward deflected the shrapnel with ease, but the ensuing dust cloud gave them enough time to shake off the impact. The party of riders leaped free of the stunned beast and charged the nearest group of soldiers, clearing room for more of their monstrous allies to land.

Some of the wyverns took a far different approach, deliberately aiming for large clusters of soldiers. The force of their titanic bodies was no different than that of a meteor, possessing more than enough power to shatter the Blade Ward and devastate entire squads of soldiers. The wyverns fared no better than those they crushed and were forced to absorb the impact with their own bodies, often perishing in the process.

I grimaced as more living projectiles rained from the sky and the number of souls in the Nexus dwindled. My fingers itched to renew the protective spells shielding my allies, but the strain of maintaining the artificial gate above the city had worn my soul to exhaustion. Even attempting to muster my mana for anything more than a simple spell wracked my soul with pain, the semi-healed scars burning with a vengeance.

As a fresh wave of pain rolled through me, Luxxa’s hand rested on my shoulder, and I looked up into her warm, green eyes.

”Take it easy, my Lady” She murmured, smoothing a stray, crimson strand of hair behind my pointed ear. ”You don’t have to win this fight by yourself, you know. You can rely on us.”

I hesitated, but eventually gave in and nodded. ”I’m sorry...it just hurts too much.”

Before she could respond, a wyvern landed directly in front of us, spraying our wards with rubble. I shied away from the sudden earthy explosion, startled as rocks the size of my head crashed violently into the Blade Ward. Fable was at my side in an instant and released his aura, blasting away any further debris.

A familiar figure emerged from the billowing clouds of dust, the light of the shard dancing off his ornate, polished armor. Several more wyverns made earthfall beside them and disgorged their passengers, taking up positions on our flanks. The nearest allied soldiers were dozens of feet away locked in their own battles with the monsters and their riders, leaving us alone and surrounded, our backs to the shard.

”Not so tough when you’re by yourself, are you,” Barron asked, advancing to the front of his soldiers. He smirked at my apparent unease and exhaustion, the gesture making the scars on his face ripple menacingly.

As he took a step closer, getting dangerously near, the two ice spirits with me tensed, gripping their massive broadswords in both hands. The commander eyed them warily for a moment before his confidence returned.

”That’s close enough, Commander Barron,” Orion said, keeping his voice respectful despite the circumstances.

Barron took another step, staring a challenge at the veteran soldier. ”I’ve lost far too many men to retreat now. But your tricks have run out, haven’t they. Whatever damned infernal magic you used to turn our spells against us only works if we cast them, but now we’re up close and personal. And do you think those little shiny dolls scare me?” he said, gesturing with his sword at the spirits. ”It’s obvious to anyone with real power they’re just mimicries. They may have got the jump on us earlier, but without your magic, do you really think you can compete with our wyverns in a contest of strength? It’s only a matter of time until we pop those bubbles you’re hiding in.”

Mimicries? Real power? I glanced at the two ice spirits, my tail curling in confusion. Did he somehow think these things were fake, or just cheap knockoffs? If anything, they were more powerful than traditional elemental spirits because they possessed actual skills and experience, not to mention their combat abilities actually improved as the anomaly continued to fight, proving its sentience.

”Then there’s nothing more to say,” Orion replied steadily, ”Come, and we shall prove who is more worthy to possess the oracle.”

”Indeed. Once we drag her over your dead body, I’ll be sure to let my men have her at least once for every one of my soldiers I’ve lost, twice for the wyverns. Kill them!”

At his command, the Dead Wing Legion sprung into action. A wyvern pounced over Barron, its thirty-foot-long form long length writhing in the air like a water snake. Soldiers moved under its shadow, using it as cover to close the distance between us. The wyvern seemed to fill the sky with wing, claw, and scale, but none of my companions shrank from it.

But before they could respond, the ice spirits took action. One kicked off the ground, leaving a small crater behind, and intercepted the massive monster mid-air. The wyvern tried to swat it away, but its claws came to a shuddering halt on the edge of its blade. It looked absurd, a six-foot-tall knight parrying a claw bigger than it was, but that was the truth before our eyes. Before the wyvern could accept it, the knight’s sword flashed and severed the entire limb.

Screaming, the wyvern flapped its wings to gain some distance, but the other spirit had appeared behind it in the air. Another flash of icy steel and, just like that, the wyvern plummeted to the ground, now missing its wings.

It crashed amid the charge of the others, crushing a few knights but clearing the sky for another monster to take its place. More lunged at us from the air, and I ordered my spirits to shield us from their attacks. It took the pressure off of my companions, allowing them to focus on fighting the human soldiers of the Dead Wing Legion.

With our backs to the shard, we could only be assaulted from the front. Luxxa took point, slamming into the first approaching swordsman with her shield. He grunted at the impact and stumbled back, the blow lowering his guard just long enough for Gith to sneak an arrow in his ribs. He died with a scream, blood gurgling from his lips, trampled under the feet of his charging allies.

The first few hit Luxxa hard, numbering enough to tie her down and let a few slip by. But it was no easier past the knight, as Orion waited for them with a grim look on his face. Gith’s arrows moved to support him, taking down soldiers the moment they lowered their guard to attack the veteran soldier.

”Sunburst!” Luxxa cried, casting a third-circle sun spell.

A flash of light briefly lit up the shadows of the storm, blinding the men surrounding her. They hissed and squinted in pain, giving her a chance to cut several of them down. A blast of lightning from Jenna claimed the lives of a few more, earning us a few precious seconds of reprieve before the next wave hit.

The ice spirits were doing a wonderful job keeping the wyverns at bay and had even managed to kill almost a third of them. Their battle ranged all over the inner courtyard, the spirits slowly getting further away as they started hunting down the rest. Without their monster’s support, the Dead Wing Legion was only able to show a portion of their true combat power. They’d trained almost exclusively to fight in tandem with their mounts, and without the ability to utilize their ranged harassment tactics found it almost impossible to break our position. Luxxa and Orion refused to budge no matter how many soldiers they fought, and with Gith and Jenna’s support, we managed to hold them off.

”Damn it all,” Barron finally cried. The man scowled at the corpses of his legion, which had begun to pile up in natural fortifications around our party. ”Pull back the wyverns, they’re too expensive to lose like this. As for you...” he glared at me, ”I’ll settle this myself. Alpha team, with me!”

It was now I realized a small group of soldiers had refrained from the suicidal charge. There were only four or five of them, but they were the strongest among the Dead Wing Legion. Their souls were at the peak of fifth level or in the beginning stages of sixth, with Barron himself reaching the upper stages of sixth level.

With the retreat of the weaker soldiers and the wyverns, the ice spirits gathered back at my side, and my allies got a chance to catch their breath. Which was good, because it was now time for the fight of their lives.