Chapter 38
Columns of armored soldiers rushed the walls as Rys teleported in. They maintained a solid line, shields raised. Hellfire and arrows rained down on them. Dozens of soldiers vanished in the flames, and more fell as arrows punched holes in their limbs.
All the defenders had pulled back to the inner wall, given how few there were. The outer wall lacked the enchantments to withstand a magical assault, so holding it with only several hundred soldiers would be extremely hard.
Instead, the Ashen and Kinadain archers provided fire support from the battlements of the inner wall. Most of the demons and other soldiers remained in the inner courtyard. There were two gatehouses to defend.
Grigor defended one. Alsia defended the other along with a small unit of elite swordsmen.
“Rys, you’re here,” Fara said when Rys teleported into the keep.
“No ladders or catapults,” he noted, looking out a window. “They’re up to something. Any sign of the mages?”
“None. Taras and the Malakin didn’t find them in the swamp, either.” Fara scowled. “The mage-knights are here, but the mages have vanished. Maybe they fled after they cast their spells, but I doubt it.”
“Of course, they didn’t. They’re hiding somewhere,” Rys said.
The Malus League soldiers broke into a charge. Roars rose up from their ranks as they rushed the gates.
Within seconds, the enemy vanished behind the cover of the outer wall. The Kinadain stopped firing, as the arc was too severe. But the Ashen didn’t stop.
Plumes of blood red flames exploded from beneath the enemy soldiers as the Ashen switched to indirect ritual casting, instead of lobbing balls of hellfire. If they worked together, they could cast hellfire rituals similar to the one that Rys used when he attacked Harpiscon.
The screams of fear and pain from the Malus League soldiers made it clear they hadn’t expected this. But they didn’t flee.
They were up to something.
Rys continued to watch from the top of the keep, his eyes fixed on the gate. Something was happening there. Something magical.
Several snaps of magic reverberated through the magical plane. A moment later, the gate exploded into splinters. A dozen soldiers stood in the opening, their arms outstretched. Magical energy whirled about them.
Mages. They had hidden themselves as ordinary soldiers. A cheap trick, but an effective one. They could be anywhere, and there was no easy way to spot them.
Well, no easy way for ordinary people.
Rys and Fara ran down to join Grigor in the inner courtyard.
“Rys,” Grigor greeted. His four glowing eyes fixing on Rys.
“The mages are dressed as ordinary soldiers. Send some demons onto the walls and tell them to spot for the Ashen and Kinadain,” Rys ordered.
Grigor nodded. “Our soulsight. Of course.”
Grigor bellowed orders, and a dozen demons leaped on top of the walls. They didn’t need stairs, given the relatively small height of this fortress. Rys made a note to build bigger walls in the future.
“Soulsight?” Fara asked.
“Demons can sense magical power with their soulsight, if you remember,” Rys explained. “They’ll be able to separate the mages from the ordinary soldiers at a glance.”
“Damn. We should have thought of that earlier,” Fara said.
He shrugged. “It’s not a huge loss.”
Rumbling and crashing filled the air. The enemy advanced into the outer courtyard and were met with the traps that had been laid.
But Rys heard precious few screams. Instead, he heard other noises. Smaller explosions. A sound like a sawmill. Shouted orders.
Margrim let him know what had happened using mindspeak, and he frowned.
Most of the traps had failed. The magical traps were deftly avoided by the enemy mages, which proved that the Malus League had capable ones in their army. They weren’t buffoons casting cantrips and calling themselves mages.
The physical traps, like the log traps, had some success, but the raw power of the enemy had blown them away. The mage-knights fired magical bolts from their weapons and turned the logs into splinters. Or their enchanted armor allowed them to shrug off pit traps.
Elder Jaime had spoken poorly of the mage-knights, but their armor seemed powerful.
This was the power of magitech. Mass-production of magical equipment was changing the world, and Rys witnessed it here. Those mage-knights were elite warriors, simply because they had a magical suit of armor.
Did that mean the Malus League had some sort of magitech production capability? Rys nearly drooled at the thought of taking that.
Hellfire quickly began to rain down on the enemy, however. The enemy losses mounted up. The outer courtyard was a kill zone. Stuck between two walls and with their enemy behind a magical barrier, the Malus League soldiers were sitting ducks.
Like before, the enemy prioritized the gates. Grigor called his noble demons to his side.
Rys moved to Alsia’s side. The enemy had split their force. Grigor didn’t need help, and Rys needed to show the Kinadain how powerful he was.
If anything, he felt thankful that the Malus League was powerful enough to break through both walls. It gave Rys the chance to show off.
A pulse of magic blasted across the entire battlefield. The source was from the swamp, but from farther away from the road.
Rys let the Malakin know about the spell’s source, as there must be mages there.
As he returned to reality, inhuman screeches split the air. They came from the other side of the gate. More magical pulses—weaker this time—echoed from where the Malus League soldiers must be.
A chill ran down Rys’s spine. He recognized the feel of this magic.
“Prepare yourselves,” Rys snapped, unhooking his axe.
The Kinadain warriors didn’t need urging. They stood in a semi-circle on the inside of the gate, weapons raised.
Alsia stood in the center, close to Rys and Fara. The Kinadain duchess held a single longsword and wore the same spellblade uniform she had met Rys in. Her face was gritted with determination.
The gate exploded. Rys ignored the shower of splinters and instead looked past the cloud of smoke and sawdust.
Just as before, several mages stood on the other side.
But this time, black energy and liquid oozed from their skin and orifices. Some had burn marks or were missing chunks of their bodies. But all of them moved like normal humans and were still capable of casting spells.
Magical energy poured out of them. Where any of them were wounded, a constant stream of prismatic light glittered in the air.
The mages balled up more energy, preparing to cast more spells.
Then the mage-knights charged, their screeches filling the air. Black shadows spilled out from every gap in their armor.
Necromancy, and surprisingly good stuff at that. Rys regretted talking shit about the Malus League earlier. As foul as this magic was, it showed genuine talent.
The mage-knights crashed into the front line of the Kinadain. To their credit, the Kinadain didn’t flinch. They saw worse during every journey into the Labyrinth.
Mass-produced magical equipment met the hand-forged weapons of the Kinadain elites. Sparks flew. Blood pooled. More and more of the foul necromantic energy filled the air as the undead bodies of the mage-knights tried to keep fighting.
Rys vaporized the mages with a hellfire ritual, which filled the gate with a massive plume of blood red flame. Once it passed, more undead soldiers charged through. Screeching filled the air.
Soon, Rys heard other noises. That of the living Malus League soldiers screaming for help and terror, only to be torn apart by the undead. Magic poured across the castle, bringing back every corpse as another undead warrior, even stronger than they were when alive.
The necromancers were converting their army into the undead, even if they hadn’t died yet. Rys doubted the Malus League soldiers knew what the mages had planned for them when they’d attacked the fort.
The Kinadain roared with anger as they fought. Whenever one fell, another Kinadain pulled him clear. Rys heard the terror behind them, as the warriors begged not to be turned into monsters. At least one asked an Ashen to finish him, so that there wouldn’t be enough to bring him back.
Rys tuned it out and focused on the surrounding battle.
Alsia cut through the enemy with practiced, almost elegant motions. Her sword sliced through flesh and she blew holes in enemies with magical lances with flicks of her wrist. Fara covered her back, flinging spiritual flames that consumed the undead foes utterly.
For his part, Rys cut the undead warriors apart while also disintegrating them with hellfire. But his thoughts were elsewhere. He needed to end this. A meat grinder against thousands of undead was a horrific battle, even if he had the technical advantage.
“Fara, try to disrupt the necromancy around the most powerful undead!” he shouted. “Try the mages, then the mage-knights.”
She snapped off an affirmative, then leaped away from the battle so she could focus exclusively on disruption magic.
The necromancers must be supplying magic to their minions. All summoning requires a power source, just like normal magic. Without it, the world would destroy the summon. That’s why infernals need a summoner—without one, they are a magical being in a non-magical world.
The next step was to build a proper kill zone. The Kinadain fought well, but every casualty they suffered fed the necromancers.
But the undead were weak to hellfire. Extremely weak. Hellfire converted physical matter to magical energy, so it could then be removed from the world. But undead were already mostly magical. So burning them up with hellfire was trivial.
Rys used Margrim as an intermediary, and conferred with Grigor using mindspeak. They quickly agreed to push the undead out of the inner courtyard. Then Margrim and the Ashen would nuke as many undead at once with huge hellfire blasts.
The constant barrage of hellfire ceased immediately as Margrim bellowed orders at his Ashen. Grigor pushed forward on the other side of the keep.
“Alsia, we need to drive them out of the courtyard,” Rys roared. “This is the last push.”
Despite their exhaustion and pain, the Kinadain roared in approval. Their weapons cleaved through the undead and they surged forward.
Once the undead had been pushed outside of the gate, Rys checked with Grigor. Then he gave Margrim the okay.
At the same time, Rys added his own hellfire to the mix.
The outer courtyard became an inferno. The black energy of the undead vanished in a whirlwind of blood red flames as plumes of flame burst from the ground. For several long seconds, Rys heard nothing except the roar of fire and the unearthly screams of the undead.
When the spells ended, many undead still remained. But there were few enough that they could be mopped up.
Rys turned his attention to the necromancers.
“Taras, did you find them?” he asked.
“We did, Lord Talarys. There are fifty of them in a clearing south of the road. We will need support,” Taras responded. “They are responding with force to any approach.”
Rys checked his connection and confirmed that at least one Malakin had been banished already. No wonder Taras was so serious.
“I’ll be there.”
The Kinadain joined him, along with Alsia.
The necromancers tried to flee, but the Kinadain proved why they were known for their hunting skills. Not a single one escaped.
By the time everyone was captured and the battle finally over, the sun had set. Red rays cast a fitting color over the fortress, which had been turned into a butchery.
Rys had defended his kingdom. In doing so, he had seen a glimpse of the power that humanity now wielded.
It left him hungry for more. But for now, he was victorious. He had constructed his new kingdom and defended it from an invader.
Now, he needed to mop up before the castle’s power drained away completely.