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Demoness 2 - Chapter 66 - Concepts and Crumblings
🕑 Added 2024-03-13 09:58:41 +0000 UTCElania raced down the staircase of the City Watch Headquarters. The fortress shook around her, the sounds of battle raging outside. Dust rained down from the ceiling with each impact, ancient masonry groaning under the onslaught.
The elevator had been inoperable, and that had left the stairwell.
She was already halfway down when she realized she could have climbed back to the roof and simply flown to the ground.
Without warning, a chunk of the wall exploded inward, stonework shattering under a blanket of golden light. Elania cursed, throwing up her arms to shield her face from the flying debris.
The staircase shuddered, cracks spider webbing out from the point of impact. Elania didn’t hesitate. She gathered herself and leaped across the gap.
She landed on the other side, her knees flexing to absorb the impact. The fortress shook again, and she had to brace herself against the wall with a wing to keep her balance.
“Damm it,” she muttered. One of the major advantages they had so far during the fighting was that the enemy lacked any siege equipment. They had been attacking fortified positions, but the walls had been an equalizer.
From the golden light she’d seen, it was probably something the monks had used.
Their golden bells weren’t that long ranged, but it was possible they had something else for smashing stonework. She just wasn’t sure why they hadn’t brought it out sooner.
The fortress wasn’t going to hold.
The order to evacuate was probably given far, far too late.
At the bottom of the stairwell was a scene of barely controlled chaos. Wounded guards lay scattered about, their armor rent and bloodied. Many of them moaned in pain, while others weren’t moving at all.
A harried-looking lieutenant barked orders, his voice hoarse from shouting. “Get those stretchers loaded! We need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice!”
Less injured guards hurried to comply, lifting and tending to their fallen comrades. Another group worked with grim efficiency, stacking the bodies out of the way. Another man passed through, wielding a large mop that did its best to shove the splattered floor clear.
Elania approached the lieutenant, who looked up at her with apprehension. “Lady Elania,” he said, inclining his read respectfully.
Elania nodded, her mind already racing ahead. “We need to secure the wall that leads to the Magistry,” she replied.
The lieutenant frowned, his brow furrowing. “The wall is broken in places,” he said, hesitation creeping into his voice. “And the ramp was scuttled when it was clear we would lose it. There’s no easy way up or down.”
Elania fixed him with a steely gaze. “You’ll need to find a way to manufacture a ramp we can put down. The order is coming down the line for a full evacuation of the fortress to the Magistry.”
The man blanched. “We’ll never make it.”
“We will. Just follow orders and start organizing a team. The ramp is critical or everyone here is going to die,” Elania answered.
He stared at her for another second. She wondered if he had thought they would all be dying already, and that she was insane for suggesting otherwise.
Suddenly steel slid into his spine, and he nodded. “I’ll see to it.”
He turned and started barking orders at several of the other guards as she headed down to the ground floor of the lobby.
As she stepped onto the ground floor, her eyes scanned the scene. The once orderly headquarters had transformed into a hive of frenzied activity. Guards rushed about, forming new units from the shattered remnants of their former squads.
The air buzzed with a mixture of fear and determination.
A grizzled sergeant barked orders, his voice cutting through the din. “First squad, you’re on point! Second squad, cover their flanks! We’ve got to hold that line!”
The Guards snapped to attention, their faces grim. Each man fingered his musket or sword nervously, and then the order to move went out.
Elania followed them.
The courtyard was chaos, contained. The walls in every direction crackled with the non-stop roar of cannon and musket fire.
Guards on the walls took turns popping up from crenulations to fire, then duck down to reload. Half of them were using crossbows, having run out of shock-crystals.
A sphere slammed into a nearby wall, sending the upper part of it shattering, the men and stonework flying into the air and landing just in front of her. She extended her wings to their maximum size and caught it all, softening the impact to the men and preventing the debris from landing on the dozen men that had been standing underneath it.
Further away, others weren’t so lucky.
She sat down the bulk of it gently and moved toward the main gatehouse.
A numb feeling passed through her. Why did [Divinity] only destroy? Where were the healing light spells and magic? She should have been able to heal everyone she had passed, including those in the hallways.
She nearly tripped as a wounded man grabbed her ankle.
“Water,” he croaked, his eyes looking glassy and lost. He had a hole in his chest.
She froze. Kneeling down, she took his hand. “I don’t have any. I’m sorry.”
Closing her eyes, she tried to will her [Power] into him, to somehow heal him. [Divinity] tinged the effect yellow, and a thin aura of light surrounded him.
It didn’t work. She didn’t have the ability to heal.
A sudden realization of the transformation she wore as a cloak over herself hit her like a sledgehammer. Seraphs didn’t heal. They punished. They killed.
That was their nature.
[Absorb the lingering Power from Guard – Human – Lvl 133?]
Anger roiled off of her as she stood back up. She took the essence, and the man disintegrated into a pool of mist she shunted into one of her mana shards, partially refilling it.
No one even looked at the act that felt entirely too much like failure.
She hadn’t received any requests during her trip through the headquarters, despite walking through the pools of blood, but that was likely a good thing.
How would they have reacted if their dead brothers and sisters had suddenly started dissolving before them?
She picked up her pace toward the Gatehouse without missing a beat. When she was nearly to it she spread her wings and leaped up and slipped through the gap between the roof and the main room of the building.
Guards stood at slits and fired out of them. Others manned a cauldron of boiling liquid and poured it out the outer gate. Screams filled the air.
Gaston stood at the center of the maelstrom; a bandage wrapped around his head covering one eye.
“Get those cannons reloaded! And someone bring me a report on the east wall!” the man shouted.
A younger soldier rushed from one of the windows to him, his face pale. “Sir, the east wall is holding for now, but they’ve raised the yellow flag! They can’t hold out much longer!”
Gaston grimaced, his good eye narrowing. “Avel! Ornick! Get over there and support! Take a pack of shocks!”
Two men rushed to obey, carrying a bag of shock crystals with them. The pile he snatched them from was pitifully small compared to the rate of fire spitting out of the defenses, with only a half dozen remaining.
Gaston turned, catching sight of Elania. His eye widened in surprise.
“Lieutenant,” she greeted, nodding respectfully.
Gaston turned, his good eye widening in surprise. “Elania,” he grunted, his voice strained. “I’ve seen you flying around. Didn’t think you’d make it here.”
Elania winced as she took in his bandaged head and exhausted stance. Why he was still fighting with the injury was the first question that she almost asked but stopped herself short.
She knew why he was still fighting. It was the only thing left for him to do, other than sit down and wait to be killed.
“Are you in charge of the entire wall?” Elania asked.
Gaston grunted. “The other officers are wounded, busy, or… withdrew to request clarification from the Magister. The inner fortress is now being assaulted. Someone has to hold the line.”
Elania glanced toward the fortress as another volley of cannons belched out resistance to the attackers. Some of those officers she’d passed by had fled. It was a sour thought.
“What about Henri? Have you seen him?” Elania asked in a hurry. She needed to know for Yolani.
Gaston grunted, moving to the wall’s edge to look out a slit. “He’s on the west wall somewhere. Probably trying to be a hero.”
Elania nodded. She needed to make sure he was safe. But first she needed to deliver the news.
“I just spoke with Magister Bannon,” she said. “The Guard will be evacuating the fortress to the Magistry. Word will be down the line soon, but we need to prepare for a fighting retreat.”
Gaston’s eye widened in surprise, then narrowed. “An evacuation? That’s not going to be—”
A deafening crash interrupted him, the sound of wood splintering and stone cracking. Both of them rushed to the hole that stood over the area behind the outer gate. A second slam sent splinters of stone into the inner gate while metal groaned and protested.
“That’s a ram! Oil!” Gaston shouted.
“There is none left!” came back a reply from above.
Elania grunted.
Gaston looked at her. “We won’t hold long enough for anyone to organize an evacuation,” he said grimly.
Elania reached out and gripped his arm firmly. “Lieutenant, I need you to do something for me.”
Gaston looked at her with a frown. “What is it?”
“Send someone to find Henri,” she said, her voice urgent. “Send someone to get him and keep him safe, put him in with the second or third group of evacuees. That should be safest.”
Gaston’s frown only deepened. “Elania, I don’t think you understand the situation. We’ll all be overrun soon. There won’t be anywhere safe.”
Another smash of the gate sent the bottom of the construction bending inwards. Lightbringers shouted and shoved at it, but the door wasn’t ready to surrender yet.
Elania released his arm and stood up straight, a fierce glint shining in her golden eyes. “I understand perfectly, Lieutenant. I will take care of it.”
Something flickered across the lieutenant’s face. “Alright, I’ll send someone to find him. I can’t guarantee his safety, though, or that he is even still alive.”
Elania nodded and turned toward the murder hole. She unfurled her wings, startling the men who had lined up to drop rocks and fire on the men that would be breaching.
They stared at her with awe and fear.
“I’m going to clear a path.” She jumped down.
Then she punched the gate from the inside, spreading the force across a wide area with her knuckles, sending the door, ram and everything flying outward in a massive spray of stone, metal, and blood.
