AO 5 Ch 2

I turned back to Aurelia. "Well, of course, I could stop her, but I'm not going to. It's a task that Maribelle is uniquely suited for. And though I don't like the idea of her dying in that other body, I know she wants to help. Stopping her from that only hurts both of us," I said, glancing off into the distance, respecting Maribelle's sacrifice by watching her work. 

She shot past Emlyn and then jumped high into the air over the wall that I had made, spinning as ripples of death magic flew off of her.

Jumping into what I assumed were the enemy forces, several arrows flew over the wall, missing her. Shouting erupted on the other side, followed by several explosions of magic as she clearly engaged the enemy forces. 

Melida raised an eyebrow and looked at me.

I shrugged. "She's very good at what she does.” Unlike Melida, who was raised in a noble society, and taught magic likely as soon as she could read. I on the other hand, was still catching up with so many things. If there was something that one of my anchors could do, I was going to lean on them fully.

Not just because I needed them, but because it was a show of trust. I believed my anchors could do what they needed to and gave them the freedom to do what they were best at even if I hated it. That was part of why I was able to have four ladies at the same time. There had to be mutual trust going between each and every one of us or the relationships would never work.

Speaking of that, I glanced at Zuri, who was pointedly focusing on firing arrow after arrow, lobbing them over the wall into the enemy forces. She was often the thinker of our group, the one that came up with the master plan.

However, since we had realized the situation here on the war front, it had become evident that she had likely just lost her mother and father. Though she wasn't moping in the corner, the fact she was avoiding taking charge and making plans told me she was certainly in need of some time to grieve whenever it was that we had time.

I think we were going to be a little short on down time, sadly. What with an army bearing down on us and all.

Turning around to the rest of the fort, I began to wave my hand, weaving stone back up from the ground, forming walls in a crude structure. It had been night when we had attacked the fort and my remembrance of it was a little flawed. But I wasn't exactly new to building forts and was happy to build as much as I could.

Getting something off the ground would make me feel remarkably better when it came to trying to defend this place. 

"Don't wear yourself out," Melida warned me. 

"You don't have to worry about me," I shot her back a smile. "I can go for days."

Finley had a smile curl up on his lips before he stamped it down when Melida turned back towards her husband. Brusset, on the other hand, let out a low chuff. The northman looked like he was half bear and I often thought of him as a bear man. 

"So, officer, what's the plan?" I asked Melida. "We can make walls all day. Zuri probably can fire arrows for at least half that. But how do we stop an army?"

The older mage glanced at me. "You don't stop an army. All you can do is wear one out. Armies are expensive in just about every sense of the word. From food to armor to morale, all we have to do is make it too costly for them to push forward and eventually they will have to give up."

"So, like, at play keeps and mages when you stop trying to really win and you start trying just to whittle down to reduce the point gap?" I asked. 

"Kind of. Except when you do that, you usually have the ability to retreat. There's no retreating. I will not lose my fort." She stood with her arms behind her back, her chin jutted up and I knew then and there that Melida would die before she retreated.

The woman had clearly no sense of self-preservation.

Then it was back to work because I really didn’t want to die here.

It didn't take long for me to feel Maribelle's soul snap back to Soulguard. Without missing a beat, I took one of the bodies that I'd already restored and stuffed her soul back into it. She sat up with a start, her body once again taking on Maribelle's profile. This time, however, she was a tan woman with light red hair. She shook herself out after she finished her own transformation.

"Are you sure you want to keep doing this?" I put a hand on her shoulder. 

She curtsied to me. "It is of no consequence that I throw away these bodies," she gestured at herself. 

But I took her face in my hands and stared into her eyes. "But you will ensure that you always return to me, right?"

"Absolutely, Sir," Maribelle said, dipping her eyes low before turning and rushing off the wall. 

A few mageforged bounded over the wall that we had made and into what Melida had referred to as the Kill Zone. It was a space of open land between the wall I had erected and the wall of the fort. It was perfect for mages and archers to pick off anyone who tried to cross the space.

Emlyn had been filling it with holes and spikes to slow anyone down who tried to cross it and make them an easier target.

Not that they got very far. As soon as the mage-forged leapt over, Emlyn twisted and crossed the distance between her and them, her blade flashing with lightning. As she cleaved two of them in half, Zuri's arrow pinned a third to the wall. 

After Maribelle bounded over the wall, no more mage-forged appeared. Instead, there was once again the sounds of battle on the other side.

I held my hand out, tapping the fox sphere and summoning a large ball of fire, concentrating it and compressing it as much as I could. 

"Do you remember the last time you played with fire?" Emlyn cautioned me from the bottom of the wall. 

"I do, and it went spectacularly."

"It kind of blew up in your face," Aurelia said from my side. 

"Not you too," I gasped. "I only need one sassy partner," I gestured at Emlyn. 

Aurelia had a light smile on her face, but rolled her eyes. "My job is to keep you alive, and I think that would be easier done if you didn't play with fire."

"Well, I'm not essentially magically drunk and being attacked by someone who's been blessed by a god," I said, waving my hand to the side. Casually making gestures while waving around what was currently a very volatile ball of fire. It made Aurelia take a  nervous step back, and she was the one who was fireproof. 

"I would feel better if you concentrated on that," she said. 

"Oh, well then, stop interrupting me," I said, putting both hands forward again and lifting the ball of fire away from me and holding its compression as I launched it over the wall. 

The thing about fire magic was that when you compressed fire, it didn't like it. And when you stopped compressing fire, it hit back like a bitch. So when that ball that I lobbed over the wall was no longer being compressed by me, a large plume of fire exploded and soldiers screamed from afar.

I could have used many of my elements, however. Fire, of course, was always particularly dangerous, because not only would people get burned directly by the fire, but it put off enough heat to scare plenty more. 

Melida turned to me, "Start using all of your elements, different attacks. If you have time to throw attacks, then I want you constantly using different elements. Give the illusion that we have a whole battery of mages back here," she said making a stack of stone balls.

Unlike me, she couldn’t just keep firing off magic attack one after the other. 

From the mess Emlyn had been making down below, I grabbed onto the stone and turned them into sharper, narrow spikes that I then launched into the air with a wave in my hand, only for them hopefully to fall down on a few hapless soldiers on the other side.

Though a dozen spikes would at most injure a dozen men, not nearly as effective as a fireball, in my opinion. Then again, I wasn't the one in charge, was I? Melida was the officer. 

So, I continued switching between earth, ice, fire, sprinkling in a few bolts of lightning, as well as some balls of light. Darkness did not work quite so well in attacking people at range. Dark magic tended to have a more flexible feel to it, though Eva had demonstrated that you could twist shadows around themselves and create a hard object. I’d have to be close to do that. 

Once again, Maribelle's soul snapped back to me and I went to put it in another body.

As I did that, ladders smacked against the far wall, and shining helm after shining helm began to crest the wall. Unlike the one we stood on, this one didn't have parapets to defend those on top. Zuri's arrows began to pick them off as Emlyn rushed out of the kill zone, several of their men drawing crossbows and firing at her.

Not that a mundane crossbow would do much to a skilled anchor. Emlyn was wearing her kingdom blues, most likely coursing with mana and as tough as monster hide. She scaled the 30-foot wall that I was standing on with ease, landing by my side, her weapon drawn and ready to defend me. 

"Why don't you throw some magic, Emlyn?" I said, having seen her work down below and knowing she was nowhere near as skilled as me. 

"You're the mage," she said a little too quickly. "There are only a few mundane soldiers. Go ahead, pick them off." 

I flicked my fingers in the air, several bolts of lightning scattering out and frying the soldiers off of the wall. Thankfully, I was skilled enough that I didn't blow a giant hole in the wall. And with that, I smirked, only for the wall on the other end to explode into fragments of rock that then hurtled towards us. “Wasn’t me.”

Emlyn and Aurelia darted in front of me, their weapons drawn, their kingdom blues giving off a faint glow as they protected me from the stone shards flying through the air. 

"Why, thank you," I said to both of them. 

Maribelle and her newest body shot into the breach of that wall.

In a second, I could see her jump on a robed man, her daggers punching into him several times as she was suddenly riddled with arrows and soldiers were stabbing her with swords. Even looking like a sudden pincushion, she spun, death magic rippling out from her, the death magic taking the lives of everyone nearby. Life magic flooded her body and pushed out the arrows and swords. 

"See, Maribelle has a pretty good grasp of my magic," I gestured for Emlyn.

"She's just throwing it willy-nilly." Emlyn waved off my comment. "Making holes was something that required a little bit of concentration." 

"Uh-huh. And that's why you had to use lightning magic to make holes in the air," I smirked at her. 

"Well, if you think you're so good, why don't you tell me how this works?" 

"Honestly, for you," I said, glancing at Emlyn out of the side of my eye, "I would just let you get really, really angry and then stab your sword forward while thinking about lightning." 

I got a glower in return. I took it as my prize. Getting reactions out of Emlyn was my favorite pastime.

Yet despite her reaction, she turned towards the breach that Maribelle was fighting in and frowned, working herself up. 

"If only you could be like Maribelle," I said, clicking my tongue. 

Emlyn continued to stare at the breach, though I got a look from Melida, asking me if what I was doing was wise.

Once Emlyn sufficiently worked herself up, she stabbed her sword forward. Lightning crackled off of it, but didn't go further than a few feet before petering out. Emlyn frowned again, and then slashed with her sword, coming to a sudden stop. This time, lightning shot out in full force, soaring over Maribelle and into the mass of gleaming helms that I could see through the breach and the wall. 

"And what do you think about for that one?" Aurelia asked. 

Emlyn put the tip of her sword on the top of the wall and leaned on it, smirking. "I was thinking about Ard's opinion of ice cream." 

I gave her a funny look. "There's no way that makes you that angry." 

"No, but sometimes it makes me want to throw you across the room," Emlyn said, "just like that lightning." 

I squinted back at her. "That's not at all how this works." 

"Works for me. All I have to think about is how Ard continues to insist that that abomination he called ice cream was better than the stuff in the capital." 

"What abomination did he make?" Melida asked. 

"Oh, with several days old milk. He couldn't get sugar, so he put flour and salt in it." 

Melida made a face of pure disgust. "You're kidding me. He did that to ice cream?" 

"I know the horror, right?" Emlyn talked around me. "And then he has the gall, the gall," she repeated, "to have ice cream in the capital and say he preferred his." 

"Well, you have to admit the man has to have at least moderately decent taste to pick you," Melida said. 

Emlyn seemed to think about that for a moment.

"Yeah, I have to have good taste. Unless you're a bad decision," I said, squinting at Emlyn. 

"No, that's probably right. I'm probably a poor decision," Emlyn settled on that rather than letting me suddenly have good taste. "Well, the reality is, you probably could have done better," Emlyn said. "But we all know you're too boneheaded to ever give up on something." 

I wrapped my arm around her waist at that and pulled her against me, pecking her on the cheek. "Oh, see, I knew you cared. In this case, my stubbornness is a positive quality." 

Emlyn made an amused hum, though she fought to keep the smile off her face. 

Finley was glancing over at us from the side. "I don't know if this is what we should be doing amidst a siege." 

Melida waffled her head. "Is it really a siege if we're not completely surrounded?" 

"You're right. We have no walls. We're not in a siege. How can defending a pile of rubble be considered a fort worthy of a siege," Finley said dryly. 

Melida playfully snapped back. "Are you calling my fort a pile of rubble?" 

Only to earn an eye roll from her husband. "I'm just asking that we are at least passably serious."

"Where's the fun in that?" I asked. "We might die, and if I die, I'd really like my last moments to be laughing."

"I would rather not die at all," Finley said.

Emlyn chopped her sword down and sent another bolt of lightning into the breach that Maribelle was fighting in. There was the daunting view beyond her. As far as I could see, all the way into the horizon, there was nothing but gleaming helms and wagons.

"Then again," Melida said, "we don’t have to defeat them, we just had to wear them out."

Though Missy's words were also still echoing in my head, that there was likely a powerful mage amongst them that was operating on simple commands rather than strategic decisions. I could see a ripple in the army in front of me. As they crossed all of the sand that I had brought down, a gap formed in their ranks before they managed to cross and regroup, only to come to a standstill.

At Maribelle, who was fighting like some sort of cornered animal, I glanced over at Aurelia, thinking about the cornered animal. "Do you want to get in there and fight?"

Aurelia shook her curly red hair. "Yes, but no. I would love to fight, but I know that it is too much of a risk to try and go against those sort of numbers, even for an anchor," she said. "It would simply be too easy for one of those soldiers to turn out to be a mage-forged or an anchor and surprise me while fighting in that sort of mass. I'm not Maribelle, who can shrug off getting stabbed in the kidneys," she said as we all watched her fight tooth and nail, killing dozens as they attempted to wear her out.

Most importantly, she was stalling the forces, only for the rest of us to continue to lob attacks at the army. The gap I had seen in crossing the sands suddenly grew wider, and I watched as the advancing army slowed to a trickle.

On the other side of the sand, they were well out of range of myself and Emlyn. Zuri could possibly launch some arrows that far, but when she lifted her bow to fire one, it was intercepted midway. It was great enough distance that mages had the time to react.

"They're going to clear the sand," Brusset spoke for the first time on the wall. The bear man spoke rarely, and when he did, it was usually more intelligent than you would expect from a half bear, half man.

His prediction was, however, correct, as waves of sand rippled beyond the current line of forces. Mages were shoving it off the mountain path.

"Damn it," I cursed. "I needed that to restore the mountain. Do you realize how much harder it's going to be if I had to drag all of that sand back up the mountain?" I rubbed my forehead.

Melida glanced at me. "Doesn't matter how long it takes. You're rebuilding that mountain after you rebuild my fort."

"I told you it wasn't my fault," I held my hands up.

"It doesn't matter if it was your fault." A sly smile grew on Melida's lips. "One of the best parts of being your commanding officer is I now get to tell you what to do."

I gasped and put a hand playfully on my chest. "You wouldn't."

"I would. It is quite literally my job to give you things to do."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you actually have to order me around," I said, feeling a little better knowing we would get more time to breathe.

"Oh, but I do. Because otherwise, people will ask, 'What is that mage of yours doing? All he does is banter with his women.'"

I did a slow circle looking around us. "What men? I don't think you have anyone left."

She hooked her thumb over her shoulder at the two anchors. "You'd be surprised how much Finley can complain."

The thin, dark-skinned man scoffed. "Har har. You know she's running out of content when she tries to make me the butt of her jokes," Finley said.

"That's simply not true," Melida shot back.

"But if I make it true, then you can't make fun of me," Finley winked. "Some of us have been playing verbal games amongst a far more sophisticated crowd," he chided Melida.

"Well, now that they've stopped to clear the sand, what do we do?" I asked, looking over the fort. "It won't take them long.”

“That just gives us time to prepare more difficulties for them. As you said, it's more difficult to build than it is to destroy. How easily do you think you could drop this last section of the pass?" She pointed out past the wall.

"Well, the real question is, are you going to make me rebuild it afterwards?"

"Yes, I am," Melida said without missing a beat. "You still need to turn it into sand."

"So you're going to have me destroy a pass and then make me rebuild it?"

"It builds character," Melida said. "Just be happy I'm not making you build latrine trenches."

"Oh, hey, yes, let's work on this. Let's work on destroying this pass." I rubbed my hands together, then paused and glanced around. "If we're the only two mages and someone eventually has to make the latrine trench, it's going to be me, isn't it?"

"Absolutely. Still, the pass. Get to work."

I cracked my knuckles and looked past the wall, kneeling down on the stone and touching a hand to it to try to get more connected to the earth. I opened up my wolf sphere to its fullest capacity and began to pour earth magic into my soul.

Whenever you opened a sphere of magic, both halves entered your soul. That is to say that while I was filling my soul with earth magic, there was always some crackle of lightning magic slipping in. With my connection to Emlyn, I slowly fed that off to my anchor, letting the earth magic build up as much as I could, foreseeing it rippling underneath the stone wall and to the pass.

Rather than move the giant mass of stone, I converted it into sand and let gravity do most of the work. The pass, under where Maribelle was fighting, began to give way.

The Garrish soldiers tried to rush past her and get to stable ground, yet my anchor would have none of that, fighting them tooth and nail and using anyone who ran as an easy target, reaching them and killing them with a touch of death magic. The pass continued to melt away as sand poured down the cliff.

Chillwind Pass was an incredibly dangerous area. To the left and the north, we had a mountain range sans one mountain peak at present. The pass itself was a sheer cliff that then dropped off into several lower cliffs before reaching the desert floor below. It was over a thousand foot drop once you went off the edge. However, the pass itself was a perfectly smooth, likely mage-modified pass. The pass spanned about ten miles and on either side, there were large forts. Well, there were large forts. The one on the Avente side was looking far worse for wear. Mostly, it was just a shell facing the oncoming Garrish forces to at least give the illusion of a fort. Its walls went right up to the edge of the cliff, with the fort proper sitting about 50 feet back.

The pass was the shortest distance between the two capitals and was at times a critical trade route between the two.

If Garrish were ever to take the fort, it would be an absolutely devastating blow in the war because at that point, Garrish soldiers could launch from this fort into the heartland of Avente Kingdom, including all of the fertile farmland that the royal family grew azurebloom, as well as the crops that sustained the country.

And so, I continued to destroy the pass, knowing that Melida was going to make me rebuild it at some point in the future.

The soldiers slipped by, one after the other. The sand underfoot, ripping them away and pulling them off the cliff. As more and more of the pass turned to sand, it gained momentum and washed them all away.

Maribelle turned and waved at me as she grabbed the last few soldiers and ensured they went off the cliff. As soon as she disappeared from view, I felt her soul snap back, and I blinked with the realization she had likely sped up the process because she clearly hadn't fallen all the way yet.

I shoved her back into her body, Maribelle standing up with a bounce in her step and pecking me on the cheek. "That will take them some time to fix the pass," she said.

"I think that's the hope. I don't suppose we could get a little shut-eye?" I glanced to Melida.

She barked a laugh. "Not a chance. Let's get back to building the fort."