Chapter 79 - Battle of Starfire Pass

Notes :

And this chapter concludes book 2 !

Not doing super great on my end (yay, indigestion), but I'll live.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this book ! And stay tuned for the start of book 3 on wednesday !

Chapter 79

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Starfire Pass

As predicted, they came without warning.

One second there was quiet night and the whistling of wind. The sun set early in the valley, and the pass particularly, as the peaks intercepted the luminescence of the star. The next the sound of bloody combat echoing around the entire pass.

The Hand rushed up the half completed parapet of the curtain wall on the third defensive line, and watched as waves of creatures boiled out of the night, throwing themselves at the horde of soulless behind the stakes of the fortification.

Some fell in the trench before the stakes. Others impaled themselves upon the defenses. But most scrabbled over the dying bodies of their brethren and attacked.

The first few were ghouls. With the same rapid regeneration as the previous ones, they died, true, but doing so took time, time the defenders didn't have.

The second wave was more screaming meat. Zombified hounds, flesh sloughing off their bones, snout a nightmarish decaying black. They leapt into the openings made by the ghouls and dispersed into the hordes, darting between the legs of skeletons, bringing them down and cracking their bones, heedless of the damage it brought to their own decaying bodies.

The maniples on the second defensive line reacted with military precision. Shields were raised, and on the palisade behind that line's abbatis, bows and slings spoke. They couldn't target the creatures already fighting the first line. Not out of fear of hitting allies, the horde was expendable, but because, quite frankly, there was no chance of hitting the low lying enemies. Which was almost certainly why they were used of course.

Finally, forms shambled out of the night. Zombies walked in tight ranks, holding weapons with putrefying hands. Most wore the outfits they had died on, armors of leather and chain mail now long past any hope of repairs. Colors of the so called Western Confederation and Principality of Mardecan were on what was left of their uniforms, crudely daubed over with new symbols.

The first rank fell almost instantly as the archers and slingers retargeted. But for each that collapsed, more came on, crushing their still animate brethren under scores of feet as they scrambled over the abbatis and into the fight, swinging rusting blades and stabbing with primitive spears.

The horde would have been more than a match for this enemy, but it was already in chaos due to the hounds, and with the remaining beasts harrying their flanks and legs, there was no real hope of victory. But nevertheless, they extract a bloody toll, a handful of traitor legionaries even doing decent last stands, buying a fraction of forgiveness for their treachery as they fell, enemy bodies scattered around them.

The zombies threw themselves at the second line, and the Hand jumped down from the tower, quickly replaced by archers from the reserve forces, their lifeless skulls staring at the battle, waiting for the enemy to come into range, ready to cover their fellows' retreat if it came down to it.

The Hand knew these style of attacks. They'd experienced them enough during the war that had torn the Empire's home continent apart.

Now would be the critical moment. And they would be there to repel it.

They reached the palisade right as zombified crossbowmen stumbled into sight, and raised their weapons.

Bolts whistled through the air, and the maniple's slingers began to go down. Orders were barked, by those officers still possessing powers of speech, and the slingers pulled back, leaving the hastati to hold the top, hunkered behind their shields, jerking with every impact, the archers still returning fire from their towers. From time to time, one of the remaining hounds managed to get their claws into the wood, and climbed up, only to be struck down by the spears of the soldiers above.

The palisade began to groan as scores of blades, hands and even heads began to batter against it. The Hand signaled, and the troops on the palisade's walkway jumped down, and joined the defensive line beyond. A couple of hounds tried to follow, but were instantly obliterated by the fire of the slingers.

The gates failed first. They were reinforced, but in a way, they were meant to fail. Far better to have the enemy funneled through a single, predictable chokepoint, than cause the palisade to fail all over, though the Hand was grimly certain it would eventually.

The gates slammed open, the bars holding them closed reduced to splinters, and a press of rotting bodies hammered through the gap.

For half a dozen seconds, none of them made it more than a handful of steps, as arrows and sling bullets rained from the maniples and the curtain wall, the archers on the wooden towers behind the troops still engaged in their duel with the crossbows outside, and holding their own thanks to their firing slits.

Then the rest of the zombies stopped battering the palisade, and the sheer momentum of the mass of flesh began to tell. They surged in like a tide of rot and decay, only to be met by a wall of spears.

The line began to bend, as the shield wall was driven back, but it held. Then, as cracks began to form...

The Hand screamed out an incantation, their skeletal arm raised towards the sky.

The crystal held between their digits vanished, its mana consumed, and they brought their arm back down, the soulless soldiers in front of them parting with mechanical precision.

A wall of zombies stumbled forward, suddenly unimpeded.

Only to be met by a torrent of flames, bursting out of the Hand's digits.

The first few ranks of the rotting corpses were simply annihilated, instantly reduced to ashes. The others behind fared little better, their flesh quickly scoured from their skeletons, their bodies dropping down as they were purified by the cleansing flames.

The last few, who were still trying to wedge through the gates, just caught fire, and continued stumbling forward, before collapsing after a few steps, as the arcane combusting devoured them whole.

Some of the animated corpses on the sides caught fire of course, but most didn't...not that it mattered. Both flanks were cut off from one another, their advantage in numbers gone. They were swiftly annihilated.

The Hand snapped their fingers, and the fire, already catching on the palisade, or flickering on some of the maniples' less lucky troops, who had to fend off ignited zombies on the edge of the area of effect, vanished in a puff of smoke.

They brought their hand back into the pouch on their belt, fishing out more crystals.

Because if they knew anything...

Horns sounded. Their calls echoing throughout the pass.

And beyond the field of slaughter, came the lockstep of true troops.

A shield wall appeared, almost out of nowhere. Ranks upon ranks of troops, each proceeding at the exact same pace, the ones behind holding their shields over their heads, forming a tetsudo, a moving fort of shields and spears. Above them, the battle standard the Hand had planted, reclaimed and held proud.

Their heraldry wasn't crudely drawn on decaying apparel, defacing the original colors the garments had been meant to carry.

Instead they were burnished and proud. The Imperial skull, surrounded by laurels, on overlaid pila and gladii.

And under it, XIX, the formal numerals topped by a roaring lion, mid leap.

The nineteenth legion had finally deigned to enter the fight themselves.

*****

There was the briefest of pauses. The archers retargeted, and began firing on the tetsudo, clearly recognizing the greater threat.

The crossbow wielding zombies that remained continued pouring fire back of course...right until the shield wall came into contact with them, and the legionnaires removed the obstruction in the most straightforward fashion, hacking apart their own meatshields, spears and swords flashing in the gaps between the shields, before vanishing again as the corpses dropped to be trampled by their masters.

The entire formation abruptly halted as it came before the abatis, and the Hand prepared for what they knew was coming.

The shields in the middle of the formation vanished.

And the towers exploded, obliterated in an instant by fireball spells.

The Hand reacted instantly, and a handful of crystals vanished in a cascade of light, as an arrow of quicksilver leapt from their fingers, ascending into the skies, and coming down where the fireballs had come from.

There was a shriek, and the center of the enemy formation exploded, as the spell hit the mage, causing their own magic to go haywire, the resulting aberration devouring their mana crystals and manifesting as a blast of lightning that lit up the night.

The formation dissolved. Not in panic, but in a carefully coordinated maneuver. Unimpeded by enemy fire, those wielding shortswords scrambled over the abatis, its trench now almost filled to capacity by zombie bodies, some still moving feebly, crippled but still animate.

Once on the other side, they formed a new line, covering their brethren with more cumbersome weapon as they came to join them, under fire from the slingers that could see them through the door.

They didn't even attempt to reform the tetsudo. The ones facing the door marched on, shields raised.

Those on the side however...the Hand caught glimpses. Woodsman axes, taken off belts and readied for use.

The first few ranks passed through the gate. And though some fell from the fire of the archers on the curtain wall, the rest didn't even break stride.

At last, both Imperial forces fought blade to blade. Soulless raising their spears against their fellows.

Two eras of the Empire, the bronze armored Hastati of the Age of Prosperity clashing with the iron totting legionnaires of the Age of Expansion.

The newcomers were more numerous, and their weapons, though less enchanted, were more modern. And as the palisade came down under the swing of their axes, their numbers began to tell.

Unfortunately, they had a critical problem.

Their foe had a Hand. They did not.

The Hand stepped forward, and didn't bother grabbing crystals from their pouch, emptying it at their feet, trusting in the art of the magisters who had refined and stabilized them.

They took the faded coin out of their pocket, and brought it up to their lips.

There was a slight hesitation...then they bit. Teeth too perfect to be living sinking into the face of an emperor most considered long forgotten.

Seals broke. Enchantments so ancient their creation was commissioned by the first Emperor came to life.

The crystals at their feet vanished. Arcane commands sang.

And the universe obeyed.

Gravity formed vortexes. One centimeter, it pulled matter one way, the next another, at accelerations that would have ripped buildings off of their foundations and sent them screaming into the distance.

The entire enemy force exploded. Bones, wood and iron reduced to so many splinters as the objects they once composed were pulled in a thousand directions at once.

The Hand stumbled back, the muted feedback of the spell coursing through their preserved flesh, before parting their jaws, releasing the coin from their teeth, and letting it fall back into their hand.

They waited, tense. But nothing came out of the night, except the sounds of a hasty retreat.

They'd won.

For now, at least.

*****

Kalia stared at Gregor in complete disbelief.

"Are you...you're saying the Bane are fighting each other?"

"Yes." The ancient skeleton hesitated. "Unless my old comrads came to their senses and tried to put an end to this madness, but that's...unlikely, at this stage."

Kalia leaned back into her seat at the council table, not feeling empty without Ramina or Sapphiria's presence.

This...this changed everything.

This whole time they'd assumed the Bane were united, one horrific entity with only one goal. But if they weren't...

It opened possibilities. Another glimmer of light in this hopeless war. One she was sure Sapphiria could use.

There was only one problem with this civil war among the undead.

They were about to be caught in the middle of it.

"We need Sapphiria here. Now." She swallowed, heavily. Without mana crystals, they wouldn't have much of a chance. But without the artificer, they would have none at all.

Gregor nodded.

"I'll send a messenger to the outpost immediately. Anything else?"

The mage-magistrate met his gaze.

"Yes." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Pray we didn't cripple the Hand's troops too much. Because right now, they're the only thing between us an annihilation."

And pray that Sapphiria made it home in time.

Or they were all going to die.