Chapter 93 - Queue the Overture, Tchaikovsky

Note : Chapter 96 has been written and added to the queue !

You guys kept making jokes about the 1812 overture on discord, so here XD

Also chapter 69 is releasing today on Royal Road, and I can't wait for the reaction !

Chapter 93

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Artillery Outpost

"Everyone ready?" Asked Sapphiria.

Paul and Ramina nodded. Ramina she'd promised to bring along. Paul she'd had to accept coming along because of Kalia.

It was hard to argue after being kissed and having 'I just got you, I'm not losing you my love' whispered huskily into her ear.

They both had ear plugs, and their mouths open. Probably overkill, but you never know.

"FIRE!"

Sapphiria pulled the lanyard. It wasn't necessary. The gun could be fired with a simple remote command. But she'd always wanted to do it.

The gun spoke. For a split second it was like the whole world was nothing but thunder.

Sapphiria looked up at the puff of smoke belched from the gun, and waited. Her drone was directly above, programmed to come back down once the shell had impacted, providing the best spotting they were going to get for rapid fire.

Actually...she could probably put some cameras on top of the comms tower. They'd shipped it with this snowpiercer voyage.

She needed to add that to the schedule.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

She was too happy to fuss about the program today.

Sapphiria turned around, smiling broadly, met by Ramina's massive grin and Paul's more muted enthusiasm.

"Alright! Let's reload, and send the next one downrange!"

The junkbots leapt into action. She'd made a few more, as well as utility bots, but the latter were focusing on constructing the tower.

Plus, they weren't armored. That wouldn't save them if the gun blew up or they mishandled a shell, but it would leave more to salvage.

She patiently waited as the drone descended, until she once again had it in comms range. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say 'until its pathetic civilian grade comms were close enough to make sense to my receptors'.

Once she had the tower, it wouldn't matter. It had emitters, sure, but also some monstrous receptors. It's what allowed them to communicate with bots so far away.

The data trickled in. This time it was short, as she had a priority on a few short spans of time.

Her eyes widened as she saw the result. Holy crap!

She'd done a small round of recon, not sending the drone into the pass again, but just testing if it could see the target from here. And yeah, the extra number of troops deployed by the Nineteenth had been a surprise. So had the state of the trebuchet, fuckers were working fast.

It seemed like that number of troops was more of a hindrance now.

"Round went short!" She called out, before smiling at Ramina's disheartened expression. "Not by much, we hit their defensive line. I think we just blew up half a maniple!"

Normally the kill radius for such a shell was fifty to a hundred and fifty meters. But that was with a shrapnel shells and against flesh and blood squishies.

The Nineteenth hadn't deployed zombies this time, and she was using high explosive shells anyway. The equation changed a lot when firing at skeletons too. The human body had a very different target profile and vulnerabilities when you....eh, when you scraped it down to the bone.

It only took fifteen seconds to reload. That was fifty percent higher than full fire rate, but Sapphiria would rather be on the safe side. She adjusted the gun minutely. It could do so automatically, thanks to some hidden motors, but she had the chance to manipulate a howitzer herself, so why not.

She turned around once that was done. She didn't need to prompt the squishies again, they were ready.

"FIRE!"

She couldn't help sprouting a grin to match Ramina's as she pulled the lanyard again and she physically felt the gun fire as the shockwave washed over her.

"Reload!"

She waited for the drone to come back down, before tilting her head as she heard the distant sounds of trumpets.

"Oh! Looks like they're pulling back!" She looked at the squishies as their face fell. "They're...pulling back, right?"

They both shook their heads.

"Those are charge signals!" Said Ramina.

Oh.

Shit!

She immediately sent orders everywhere as she pinged Cia.

"BATTLE STATIONS!" She belowed out, as the bots sped up. "Prepare to retarget onto moving foes!" The drone didn't start flitting down, it straight up crashed towards the ground, pulling out of its spin at the last few seconds as she got the update. This time she got snippets of the last few seconds it had of the pass.

It wasn't much, but it got her an idea of where the legionnaires were and how fast they were moving.

She made quick calculations, and the gun adjusted as she relayed the new angles.

It fired less than a tenth of a second after its barrel stopped moving and the bots slammed its breech closed.

*****

The Hand watched as the trebuchet came apart in a hail of splinters. Distantly, they noted that it didn't fully explode, parts of it wreathed in arcane shrouds. Ah! They hadn't protected it with a ward, but snuck in other measures in case there was an attempt on it.

Unfortunately, it was clearly made to resist magic, not a brute force mundane attack. Whatever it was attempting to do, it only partly worked.

The Hand watched as the Risen on the other side realized it wasn't a one off. And then...

Trumpets sounded. And the legionnaires rushed over their own defenses.

What the actual fu-

Oh. Oh.

The Hand looked more closely at the undead facing them.

Those were Nineteenth legion, yes.

But they were expeditionary units. The ones who had been assigned to and buried on this continent. Then exhumed and resurrected after the Nineteenth found their gravesites. Probably recently to boot. They were probably the next level of 'disposable' for the Nineteenth.

These guys probably had never fought on the main frontlines. They didn't know what modern, rebel artillery was. They thought this was a magical bombardment of some kind.

And they'd clearly switched gear after the little stunt with the ballistae. If surprised, don't fall back. Attack.

The Hand barked out orders. Reserves rushed into position as the ballistae were loaded.

What's the point? The rebels will just start hammering us the second the Nineteenth pulls back to the other side. Thought the Hand, before dismissing it with a shake of the head.

They were a Hand of Dominion. They would die standing, the arcane fire of magic in hand.

The Nineteenth's troops formed ranks. They had taken one hell of a hint, both from the direct impact and the lethal splinters of the trebuchet, but they were still coherent. Definitely had three maniples of infantry.

The archers were slower to get out of the fortifications, though the crater within them made that somewhat eas-

The first ranks erupted in a geyser of dirt and bones.

Suddenly, the other side realized that waiting and organizing into tight ranks was a death sentence. A lesson the Hand had to learn the hard way.

Trumpets bugled again.

And the half formed maniples rippled forward, like pond struck by a catapult.

The Hand grabbed their pouch, and emptied it behind the crenellations. Shimmering mana crystals scattered at their feet.

They screamed out words of power as the enemy rushed forward.

The legionnaires crossed an invisible line, and the ballistae spoke. At least a dozen went down, the large, heavy rock spheres crushing through their raised shields.

Then the Hand raised their arms, finishing their incantation.

The ground before the legionnaires turned into quicksand. The first few ranks sunk-

And the next ones continued over it as it solidified. Oh sweet throne.

The Hand spotted the mage. But the other caster was already turned towards them, gesticulating, mustering another spell.

It was too late. The Hand summoned their wards as they desperately summoned more magic. But they knew it was futile. Too long to spot the enemy, while the other mage knew exactly where their foe was.

Shi-

WHAM

The Hand watched in disbelief as the ground erupted next to the enemy mage. The shockwave nearly knocked them off their feet, though the ripple of energy showed that its dispersion shield worked, shedding the energy and allowing them to survive.

But it made them lose their concentration.

The Hand finished their spell.

Ribbons of light came down from the sky. Everything they touched, they stuck to like glue.

The mage screamed as the ribbons wrapped around them.

There was a flash of power as they tried to escape, and failed. The ribbons began to contract, smoke and dust rising from them.

Then they fell to the ground, sputtering and digging holes into the ground, before vanishing, their mana exhausted.

One down. The Hand looked up as troops began to fill the other end of the pass. Many more to go.

The rushing legionnaires came into bow range right as the ballistae recharged.

The double volley tore great gashes into the formation. And a split second later, one of the flanks simply ceased to exist as it erupted into fire and dust.

That's not Magistracy, thought the Hand as they prepared to counter whatever the other side unleashed next. There was no need to thin the numbers, the rebels were already doing that very well. They never had guns this heavy.

Maybe the thing from beneath the mountain? Then where the hell had it come from? The Hand thought it was something the rebels had evacuated and repaired. Maybe made from spare parts.

The Hand almost dropped the couple of miniature totems they freed from their belt as it hit them.

Not spare parts. Oh throne. Oh no no NO.

The mines. They didn't take the tunnels to deny the minerals to the Bane. The rebels were exploiting the ore themselves.

How? They couldn't have possibly transported furnaces and entire forges with them. Could they? Plus the smoke plumes would have been visible from anywhere within the valley!

Actually...wasn't the smoke from their settlement diminishing? The Hand could have sworn there was less. They'd interpreted it as them running out of fuel as monsters ripped the logging parties apart, but there wasn't enough gunfire to support that.

The Hand was brought out of their thoughts as the Nineteenth's archers came to a halt, and returned fire. The Hand watched the arrows rise...and noted that the other side wasn't readying for another volley.

They spotted it at the last second. Centurions crushing azure crystals in their hands.

There was a pulse of energy, and what was left of the enemy infantry rose from the ground into a great leap, accompanied by bits of the ground they kicked up as gravity stopped mattering.

The Hand gestured, and crystals vanished at their feet as a great net of crackling lightning sprang into being.

Many hit it and bones shattered. But others sailed gracefully over, blades gleaming in the light of the afternoon sun as they braced for their landing onto the wall-

WHAM

The shell had apparently gone straight through the flying Bane. And hit one of the centurions' wards head on.

It exploded, and the shockwave threw them every which way, some back into the net, others propelled ahead and missing the wall, crashing down onto the readied spears of the reserve. Too late to correct their trajectories or counteract it, which was why the Hand hadn't opted for a simple blast of force. Too easy to counter.

Many still made it onto the wall, a second mage revealing themselves as they grabbed as many as possible through a spell and yanked them back on the right trajectory.

Their only thanks for an exceptional save was a glittering beam of energy straight through the skull as they landed. Their ward took some of the energy. Their dispersion shield accounted for even more of it.

But not all, and the mage collapsed.

Then the Hand was thrown back as their bodyguards intercepted the legionnaires heading straight for them. There was a short, but brutal fight ontop of the walls, as the Hand desperately tried to look past them. The archers, what were the archers doing?

They caught a glimpse. Azure crystals. They were readying to follow their comrades of course.

WHAM

The formation exploded, both literally and metaphorically, as another shell landed in the middle of them. The archers, unlike the legionnaires, hadn't dispersed all that much, and for a few seconds, it was chaos.

A few seconds was all the Hand needed. Shards of quicksilver leapt from their digits, one of the totems in their other hand glittering with power, more crystals vanishing at their feet.

They were loath to use a spell from the previous assault, even a variant thereof, but there was no time. Yes, it was more likely to be countered, but at least these weren't mages. And the Nineteenth couldn't cover every possible scenario.

That assumption turned out to be right. The shards hit the crystals.

And their magic went haywire.

The problem with spellcrystals like this was that they were just mana crystals with an enchantment slapped onto them. They had the exact same weaknesses a mage did to disruption.

Amazingly, they didn't explode. Rather, the magic inverted its intended effect.

The skeletons crashed onto the ground as gravity became far more than they could bear. Bones cracked as they met the hard, rocky ground. Some struggled to return to their feet, fetching their bows.

A few seconds later, the next shell arrived, and their heroic efforts stopped mattering.

By that time, the legionnaires were being pushed back over the wall. Fierce as they were, most of their numbers had been obliterated on the way there or scattered beyond the wall. They were outnumbered, out of formation and facing a foe that was standing their ground on a fortified position.

The Hand idly noted that there were no more explosions as they unleashed a couple of spells, finishing off a few knots of enemies, who had managed to carve out some space to fight out in and assemble into something approaching a shield wall.

Then all was quiet. The Hand looked over the parapet, watching as reinforcements began to move into the pass. The cavalry was being pulled back, the other side clearly realizing that they were more than useless.

Then there was another call from the trumpets, and the troops halted.

A few seconds later, they turned back, and marched out of the pass.

The Hand almost collapsed. Almost certainly would have, were they still living.

They waited for a tense few seconds, looking over at the valley, and the slowly drifting cloud of smoke.

But nothing. No shells screaming down to shatter the walls.

They looked at the pass again. The Nineteenth wasn't just pulling back. They were vacating it entirely.

They'd gotten badly burnt. Five more maniples down, with barely any damage dealt.

Yeah. The Hand would also be hauling ass back.

How many troops did they have? There had at least been four more maniples rushing in, with throne knew how many zombies.

It didn't matter. They weren't the priority anymore.

The Hand had been catastrophically wrong about the Rebels. Again. They clearly had far more going than the Hand had ever suspected.

It was time to correct that. And they'd given enough breathing room to do so at last.