A Soldier's Life - 445 - (edited 8-28-25 +100 words)

Chapter 445:

We descended into the common room. A dozen Sentinels and teenagers were moving about the room in somewhat organized chaos. I recognized a few of the elves and dwarves, but couldn’t put a name to them. On the tables were strung crossbows with bolts stacked nearby. Sentinels were cocking them with a separate lever, but leaving them unloaded for now. “Evie, what is your job?” I asked as I prepared to go outside with Blaze and report.

It took a moment for Evie to give her attention to me in the pandemonium. “Help prepare meals two doors down in the kitchen there,” she said, remembering.

“Good, we will walk you there, and I don’t want you to leave unless Blaze or I come for you,” I said seriously. We stepped out onto the plateau in the dark. Glowstones and small oil fires were lit across the plateau. We followed Evie to the kitchen where she was to work, and the younger children were all gathering there. Before leaving, I identified the Sentinel in charge, one of the hatchery work leaders, and told her Blaze and I would be on the plateau. Evie embraced both of us before we left.

Shouts and orders were echoing across the plateau. “Blaze, we need to find Jalorien.” Sentinels were hustling and crisscrossing the plateau with bundles and weapons as they tried to make last-minute preparations. There had just not been enough time to get everything in place.

I looked up with my aether sight active and could see shadows crossing the star patterns in the sky. There were fewer gulls, but the fact that they were flying at night suggested they were being controlled. “Blaze, can you hit those?” I asked, looking up as I walked.

Blaze pulled an arrow, but then shook his head after scanning the sky. “I can't see anything. The lights are too bright around us,” he said. I cursed and moved toward the area with the most activity and the loudest voices.

Castellan Jalorien was issuing orders and assigning posts. Barricades and archer blinds had been built around the stairwells. Some archer blinds were placed on the rooftops of buildings at the edge of the plateau, but it was obvious not all of them had been set up. Not that the Sentinels had enough archers to cover the entire square-mile plateau.

“I need two pairs of archers in the two west nests,” Jalorien shouted to the assembled group.

“We will take one,” I replied quickly, raising a bow that appeared in my hand. Two others volunteered for the other position. I had volunteered Blaze and me since it would give us a view of the enemy fleet and also put us closer to Evie’s station. We left at a jog even though it was not needed. The ships had been spotted a half hour ago, and it would take hours to reach Sanctuary. We only paused briefly to grab bundles of arrows off a cart, with each of us carrying a hundred arrows.

We climbed the ladder leaning against the stone building and moved to the archer’s blind to secure our position. The roof was made of stone, but our blind consisted of only two 8-by-8-foot wooden panels with a triangular roof connecting them. It would provide some cover, but nothing substantial. Two empty barrels sat underneath the partial roof, alongside a modest sack of supplies. Ropes were tied to the walls and anchored to the roof to secure the blind and prevent it from being blown over or off the building entirely. Tonight, however, the wind was eerily absent. I could see nine distinct specks of light out on the ocean toward the isle. The undead lords’ castles were suspiciously dark tonight.

As we filled our barrels with arrows, Blaze asked, “Do you know what is coming?”

“Mostly. Do you?” I replied.

“I have talked with the older Sentinels and have an idea of what can attack us up here. Vampyre lords, wraiths, ghoul bats, gargoyles, and whatever undead they can make fly with magic,” Blaze said with trepidation. It was a superstition not to voice your worst fears aloud.

I nodded as we had both been in the same classes, but it didn’t hurt to refresh our memories. “The giant ghoul bats are the most common. The undead lords harvest the corpses from the Echoing Quarry Dungeon. Their wings disintegrate in the light of the sun, so they only attack at night. The Sentinels have not seen them for at least ten years, according to records.” With an ominous teasing tone, I added, “A journal entry said when Sanctuary was assaulted, the night sky was so thick with them, you couldn’t miss with a bow shot.”

“One of the men I work with was there and part of the defense. A bit of an exaggeration and a sunburst spell knocked most of them from the sky,” Blaze said, snickering. I chuckled as that was in the record as well, but there were no Sentinels currently in Sanctuary who could cast that spell.

“Wraiths can cross the water, but Sanctuary’s defenses are powerful against incorporeal undead,” I said, shivering slightly, as all my encounters with wraiths did not go well. “The vampyre lords have never attacked Sanctuary, but I am worried they might be part of the alliance since they control the soulless towns.”

Blaze relaxed against the wall of our blind. “You know, Eryk, I never had the privilege of knowing vampyre lords existed before I traveled with you. Lesser vampires were scary enough, but these nightmare lords…,” Blaze said sarcastically. Vampyre lords were one of the most terrifying creatures on the Isle of the Dead from our Sentinel education. Ancient undead horrors that, fortunately, spent most of their undead lives in slumber and basking in the nether essence the isle produced. Only the Sentinel mark could protect you from their array of powers, and even that was not guaranteed—and that mark was something I did not have.

“You are welcome,” I said jokingly as I pulled the spyglass from my belt and moved to the edge of the roof to spy on the fleet. “We will definitely see gargoyles if the lich emperor is allied with the Nashasari. The records show he's adept at animating them.” Blaze snorted in mock joy.

I focused on the nine dots in the distance. The open decks were lit with lanterns and crowded with soulless on each ship. Only a handful of serpent sailors worked the sails’ rigging as they approached. “Harpies’ tits, there has to be more than three hundred soulless on each ship,” I cursed. I only had a chance to scout five ships before the water around the Sanctuary started to glow with a green-blue light. Looking over the edge, you could see the sandy bottom and faint runes outlined in the sand. Blaze and I watched the light show below but neither of us knew what these defenses were, but the scale of them was reassuring.

“I will remain on watch if you want to get some rest,” I offered. He nodded but went through our supplies first: two heavy blankets, four focus potions, four stamina potions, four lesser healing potions, two large water skins, two flash pellets, and twelve runic arrows. The flash pellets were a way to signal the entire plateau.

The ponderous approach of the enemy didn’t make sense to me until I noticed they were tacking into a headwind. Since there was no wind up here, I guessed the Sentinel mages below were making the approach of the fleet as difficult as possible. After two hours, I switched watch with Blaze.

An hour after we switched, Blaze excitedly exclaimed, “Something is happening!”

I rose to see the ships much closer, with a blue halo surrounding the lead ship. “An aether shield? But they are still at least a few miles away.”

“Something is attacking the ship,” Blaze said, handing me the spyglass. I took it and focused in on the blue flashes. Soon, I could make out orange-red tentacles just below the water lashing against the blue screen, trying to reach the hull. I handed it back to Blaze after watching the encounter for a few minutes.

Blaze knew what it was. “That is a kraken. A small one, but that is definitely one. Before you joined the company, we took down a much larger specimen that was attacking a fishing boats,” he said while watching the action intently.

It clicked in my head. “It was a summoning array,” I announced, and Blaze looked at me. “The glowing runes in the sand. I read about it, but didn’t know the Sentinels had a skilled summoner to utilize them. In the past, if the undead lords built a ship, they would find it besieged on the sea by a kraken and sunk.”

“Well, this one is dead, and it didn’t sink any of the ships,” Blaze said unhappily, handing me back the spyglass. The aether shielding was fading, and there was no sign of the kraken. There was just a hint of gray on the horizon, and the Sentinels had done a remarkable job delaying the fleet, but hadn’t done any damage.

When the ships were just a mile away, the attack started. Blaze and I didn’t see it, but another archer’s blind shattered their flash pellet, and the cries among Sentinels on the plateau echoed the warning. We couldn’t watch the fleet approach while dealing with our own problem. One of the gulls descended and was clearly highlighted in a yellow glow as it broke the illusion over the plateau. “I can see that,” Blaze muttered, raising his new bow. He was not the first to fire as crossbows and bows echoed across the plateau.

Blaze adjusted his aim to another gull breaking the veil closer to us. I readied an arrow, but was waiting on the larger shadows I could see above. The air started to fill with the hum of arrows and the cries of falling gulls. When the first ghoul bat broke the illusion, I targeted it, but missed with my first arrow. I was an excellent shot at stationary targets and targets moving on the ground. But I had no experience against targets moving in three dimensions, and I could now sympathize with Blaze’s difficulty with the wisps.

My second arrow missed as well, and I dropped my bow in favor of the black spear to protect Blaze as one of the ghoul bats dove on our blind. With my aether sight, I could see it clearly. Its eight-foot wingspan had numerous tears, and the fur on its body was patchy. Its mouth, lined with sharp, canine-like teeth, was open, emitting a shrill cry.

Blaze shot an arrow into its neck, but it wasn't enough to stop it. I thrust Heartseeker into its chest and used its momentum to slam the ghoul bat into the roof. My timing needed to be perfect because Heartseeker would be able to pierce the creature easily. Despite its size, it didn’t weigh much, and my reflexes enabled me to achieve my goal. When it slammed into the stone roof, its wings and body crumpled in a sickening sound.

Blaze was confident in my defense and kept a steady rate of fire at the swarm of creatures breaking the illusion over Sanctuary. The minutes dragged on, and I checked the fleet as it started to spread out around Sanctuary. The only way into Sanctuary was through the opening in the rocks to reach the sheltered bay. It should funnel the attackers into a narrow path for the defenders waiting below. I couldn’t afford to be distracted as dozens of giant bats continually broke through the illusion along with some gulls.

Another ghoul bat targeted us and met the same fate as the first. We were more successful than other sentries. I noticed one bat crash into a Sentinel, knocking him off the roof and into the water far below. Two more bats immediately targeted his partner and fell under their combined attack. Jalorien responded by getting three men to the roof for support, but I don’t think the Sentinel survived.

As the battle raged, I hadn’t even noticed the sky slowly turn to gray. I frowned as the sky looked to be cloudy this morning, with no sun, meaning the ghoul bats wouldn’t be affected by direct sunlight. Blaze was constantly releasing arrows, and I took down six of the bats on our roof with Heartseeker.

It felt like things might be lighting up, but Blaze hissed, “Gargoyles.” I turned to where he indicated.

Flying from the direction of the Isle of the Dead were eleven large creatures being led by two clouds of darkness. “And two wraiths,” I added morosely. I didn’t know why they hadn’t coordinated their attacks, but it gave us a better chance, as the ghoul bats were considerably thinned.

Our post was at the edge of the coming wave of gargoyles, so we were likely going to be targeted. Then the building rumbled under our feet. While constantly aiming and releasing, Blaze asked, “What in Pluto’s pit was that?”

“More defenses?” I guessed as I moved to the edge to look at the water below. I could only see three ships, all positioned at the base of Sanctuary and spread out in the breakers. A dust cloud hovered near one of the ships, but my optimism that it was new defenses quickly faded. Arcs of blue-white lightning shot from the ship into the base of Sanctuary. It took a moment for the rumble to travel through the structure and reach our feet again. The same scene unfolded from another ship to my right.

“Dragon shit, they are making their own doors,” I said gloomily.

“We have two flying statues that have taken an interest in us, Eryk,” I tore my eyes away from the action far below and leveled Heartseeker at the approaching enemy.

© Copyrighted 2024, 2025 by AlwaysRollsAOne

No permission is granted to translate, copy, or repost this original work of fiction. If you are reading this on a site other than my Patreon, it has been stolen without my permission and violates the DMCA. Remember, this work is the result of my creative effort and is protected by copyright law. Removing or altering this notification acknowledges that you are aware that you are violating the DMCA. No permission is granted for my original work to be used to train AI.