Cataclysm War | Chapter 90: Wake the Dragon (First Draft)

Friday, August 12, 4 S.E.

Synthra ran down the streets toward the Main Gate—the Prosperity Gate—with her combat robes billowing around her legs, flanked by Bardulf, Parnym, and Kairi. The last had been an unexpected addition to their group, but the auburn-haired woman had marched out of Parnym’s quarters while tying up her hair, cheeks aflame, and had calmly demanded they take her to her brother.

Even ignoring the mortification on Parnym’s features, none of them had even entertained the idea of arguing with Leonidas’ terrifying sister, and so the four of them raced together toward the gate, bypassing patrols of the Residential Shield-Host and receiving cries of encouragement as they passed. The battle had put the city into a state of frantic energy, and the minority of citizens who had not been able to participate in the battle were working to ensure the defenders had whatever supplies they needed.

She’d already seen citizen groups running water to the Shield-Hosts, sprinting through the city to deliver food, or working together to help identify potential points of unseen ingress, moving with the more heavily armed Civitas Milites to address what they thought were gaps in security. The sheer willingness to be involved surprised Synthra, but it hardly seemed to surprise Kairi at all, who had just called it ‘American spirit’ and left it at that.

Even the Nyrfenn are following the Terrans’ lead. What a remarkable species.

Synthra shook her head and then slowed when the four of them reached the approach to the Prosperity Gate.

Not because of the battle, but because of the mass of people standing in preparedness.

Aylar had already warned them that the Prosperity Shield-Host was being sent to reinforce the main gate, but what they saw baffled the Sorceress for a moment. A sea of citizenry stood before her, arrayed in relatively disciplined ranks while officers rode horses among them, barking orders and delegating assignments as Platoons, as Leonidas called them, broke away to see them fulfilled. She spied a motley assortment of weapons ranging from spears and swords to clubs, hammers, and even several people with what looked like torn-off street lamps held over their shoulders.

Disbelief warred with bemusement as the four of them made their way through, until someone recognized them at last.

“The Queen’s Party!” the man cried, his voice thundering across the collective. “Make way for the Queen’s Party!”

Bodies shifted immediately as eyes turned toward the four of them, and Synthra swallowed reflexively when thousands of gazes settled on her and her three companions, watching them with a mix of appraisal, curiosity, hope, and pride as they made their way through the cleared mass of citizenry. Terrans were the mainstay, but dozens of Nyrfenn and even Haelfenn filled the ranks, and she couldn’t help but smile as the four of them accelerated to a jog through the sudden partition.

“Give ‘em hell!” one woman called, brandishing a pair of butcher’s knives enthusiastically.

“Forward the Crownguard!” a Haelfar shouted, which suddenly became an echoed roar.

“Forward the Crownguard!”

“FORWARD THE CROWNGUARD!”

Synthra and her companions waved awkwardly as they raced past, and Kairi laughed at her side.

“What?” Synthra asked, her voice low.

“Crownguard,” Kairi snorted, shaking her head. “So stupid. I love it.”

Leonidas’ sister, she decided, was not a woman easily understood.

The four of them arrived at the outskirts of the Gate a moment later, fully embroiled now in the screams and roars of battle, and an Army Officer split off to speak to them, his brown eyes assessing them quickly.

“You’re with the King?” he asked without preamble, his armor strangely undamaged despite the fighting.

“We are,” Synthra confirmed, glancing around and then up at the wall. “Where—”

“Above. He just did something to the enemy, and they’re reeling. The Royal Guard is already up there; you may as well hurry. The right access stairs will take you up, and they’re far enough away from the Siege Towers that you shouldn’t be in immediate danger—but, well, everything is in danger right now.”

Someone shouted, and he turned, pausing only to nod to them before striding off and shouting orders while someone else screamed above. Synthra shivered while Kairi calmly drew her shortswords, prompting her to glance at the younger woman.

“What?” Kairi asked flatly when Synthra looked at her. “It’s a warzone, Syn. May as well get ready.”

Syn, Huh? That’s not so bad.

“She’s right,” Bardulf agreed, drawing his own weapons from storage. “No time to be nervous now, Synthra. Our friend is taking the fight to the enemy! A great saga awaits!”

Synthra let out a ragged breath at their bravado but nodded, summoning her [Dragonbone Longsword] and feeling the familiar echo of her draconic lineage surge within her. It had been a gift from Leonidas. How appropriate that she wield it for the first time in battle at his side.

“Let’s go,” she said simply, and the four of them raced forward and to the right, entering one of the guarded access points to the wall and sprinting up the stairs as the chaos and frantic cries grew louder. Each step upward seemed to increase the volume of the madness, and when they emerged seconds later, the four of them came upon a scene of utter carnage.

The first thing she noticed was the unmitigated stench.

Destroyed humans in blue heraldry lay scattered upon the wall, carved to pieces with distinctly Haelfenn ruthless elegance. Their unseeing eyes stared at the sky as their bodies were left to bake in the rising sun, their flesh pale and pallid from death. Guts and blood decorated the white manastone of the ramparts, and stained the wall-walk upon which they had alighted, giving evidence to the brutality of the conflict.

Synthra’s stomach heaved at the sight, and she harnessed her Willpower to stop it from rebelling, striding forward determinedly and trying not to think of what her new combat boots were stepping through. Her golden eyes glanced over the wall, and she swallowed, tracking over the veritable ocean of humanity assaulting the gates as she strode forward.

“Figures,” Kairi muttered at her side, gripping her shortswords angrily. “It’s the Alliance.”

“The Humanity Alliance?” Parnym asked, gripping his staff as they moved along the wall, past sentinel Royal Army warriors, and further toward the mass of madness closer to the gatehouse.

“Yeah. Those are my grandfather’s colors,” Kairi confirmed grimly. “Which means we’re fighting Pops. Ace is gonna be brutalized by this.”

“Why?” Synthra asked, taking the chance to distract herself from the carnage.

“Because he and Pops were close. Real close. This is gonna eat him up.”

None of them answered her as they moved further along the wall and got their first real look at a siege tower. The massive structure was made entirely of steel and seemed to feature lines and accents that were distinctly non-Terran in design. Its ramp had smashed apart rampart crenellations when it had opened, and a small section of the otherwise impervious manastone had been sheared away by its descent.

The yawning entrance of the tower was at least twenty feet across, and appeared wide enough for ten men to leap from it at a time, granting terrifying access to the wall on demand.

Two Daggers of the Army were standing before its entrance, forming a tightly-packed shieldwall, while their compatriots stood sentinel around them—some of them taking opportunistic moments to hurl spells down at the attacking humans and glare over the wall.

Synthra and her companions were halfway through when a shout came from the Lance-Master.

“Next wave incoming!” she roared, slamming her sword to her shield.

“Shit,” Kairi said, a second before chaos subsumed all sense of order.

Synthra found herself suddenly feet away from a storm of violence, catalyzing her [Draconic Manaforce] just in-time to ward off a thrown spear as humans in blue heraldry roared up the tower, smashing into the Army with frenzied energy. The Army’s lines broke in an orderly manner to let the humans through, and then the world became bedlam.

Synthra fell into instinct as she met the first of the human soldiers, deflecting a desperate strike at her head and countering with a rapid slash that bit into his ribs and torso faster than he could react to. Blood sprayed her face, and she froze in shock, only for Kairi to abruptly appear next to her, kick the man off her sword, and slap her in the face all in the span of two seconds.

“Focus, Synthra!” the younger woman said angrily. “This is war, Princess! Get your shit together!”

Synthra barely had time to give a jerky nod before her future sister-in-law was gone again, spiraling into the fight with shocking violence that seemed to increase in both speed and ferocity with every kill. The Reaper’s Shadow moved like death itself, her blades delivering the end to anyone who came against her. Three more corpses joined the rest six seconds after she joined the battle, and then charged toward the next batch of unsuspecting Terrans.

“We have to help her!” Bardulf shouted from nearby, and Synthra nodded jerkily.

“I have an idea!” she said, pushing past the battling lines toward the tower itself. “Can you keep them off me?”

“Yeah!” Kairi answered as she danced past. “Just make it count, dumbass!”

Synthra couldn’t help but grin at the woman’s attitude and stepped forward, mustering up her mana as she heard movement and shouting from within the tower’s entrance. She’d managed to find a break in the waves, it seemed, but more would be on their way.

When the time comes to Wake the Dragon, her grandmother had told her, make sure they know the price of doing so, my child. Make sure all of them know.

The Sorceress raised her sword and drew a breath, feeling as her [Everflame Core] spiraled to full rotation within her. Draconic mana flooded out of it into her veins, and Synthra leveled her sword at the entrance, its rubies igniting with brilliant red light as she channeled the spellform through the weapon and made use of its amplification.

“First Draconic Art,” she recited as her grandmother had taught her, golden eyes narrowed upon the entrance of the tower as people died around her and Kairi, Bardulf, and Parnym worked to keep her safe. “Infernokill Obliteration!”

Draconic Arts were not Skills, not like the others she had.

They were primordial Spellforms, and they were powerful.

The mana she ejected into her blade took shape at her invocation, and the Ideation of her mind, while red flames exploded from her longsword, flooding into the siege tower’s entrance with force and heat enough that it evaporated the blood on the ground near-instantly. The wash of pressure was enough that soldiers of the Royal Army turned to stare in shock, and even Kairi paused as the Haelfenn took over to kill the last of the attacking Alliance soldiers.

Within the tower, Terrans began to scream.

Synthra grit her teeth against the mana strain and poured her pool into the attack, funneling as much of her energy into the strike as she could as the number in her mental awareness rapidly decreased. She deactivated her [Draconic Manaforce], letting the shield and its smaller-but-notable drain on her pool vanish as she threw all that she had into the spellform.

Moments later, a thunderous explosion tore out from below, and the screams multiplied in a wave of disbelieving chaos.

Synthra staggered as a wave of experience slammed into her, and she mentally felt her level rise from 22 to 25 almost instantaneously, while trying desperately not to think of how many people she’d just killed. She barely had the wherewithal to slam the points into her sorely lacking Vitality as she staggered backward from the mana drain and felt Bardulf catch her when she did.

“Easy there, Synthra,” the Shadowblade said, bracing her as she tried to find her feet. “I’ve got you,” he assured her.

Kairi, meanwhile, stepped forward warily and eyed the siege tower, visually glanced down at the red-hot steel, and then turned to the Sorceress.

“Jesus, Syn,” the Reaper’s Shadow commented in awe, “that was crazy. What the hell did you do?”

“Draconic magic,” Synthra replied wearily, feeling the immense drain on her mana as she forced herself upright with an appreciative smile toward Bardulf. “A little more than I probably needed, but it did the job.”

Kairi laughed at her words and sheathed her swords.

“Yeah, Syn,” the auburn-haired Terran said wryly. “I’d say it did the fucking job, alright.”