Cataclysm War | Chapter 89: Here There Be Monsters (First Draft)

Friday, August 12, 4 S.E.

Yarilla stared in muted shock at the swathe that had been cut through her people.

It had come like the judgment of the Heavens, a golden arc of divine retribution that had blown through the Svartfenn in a line of radiant power, obliterating ten Adepts in a single strike. When the dust had cleared, a radiant spear had been impaled in the earth, crackling with luminous power. An Elite from the Truthguard had tried to seize the weapon, and she’d watched the man burst into golden flames, screaming as they tore him apart, and the spear surged upward, returning to the hand of the golden-armored Haelfar that had thrown it.

That same Haelfar stood above them, shining with impossible power on the battlements, and his Aura washed over the defenders with unimpeachable force. The line of death that a single throw had created bewildered her sense of reason, and she remembered Xarina’s report.

He must be Uriel Aventus, one of their two Venerates.

The Dawn-Lord of the City, as she recalled his reported Title to be, stood unyielding on the battlements of the so-named ‘Sunrise Gate’, his armor reflecting the light of the rising sun and seeming to draw the radiance within it, heightening the glow of power as the City’s defenders fought against her own people. Spells and powerful aetherial discharges fizzled into nothingness against the massive wall’s wards, and Yarilla glanced down to the gate, seeing their purchased Battering Ram slamming into it almost ineffectually as the breaching force worked to gain entry.

The ladders and ropes they’d used to try to swiftly take the battlements had proven useless upon discovering that the City was waiting for them, and she’d been forced to mentally abandon that avenue of attack. Leaping onto the walls had worked partially, until the Dawn-Lord had appeared and devastated the little footholds they’d gained in a blistering demonstration of impossible power. He’d carved through the Svartfenn like a hot blade through butter, and left them ruined atop or below the wall.

Where are the Ascendants? She mentally questioned, looking around as spells impacted her people and glanced off their own wards, whizzing away to detonate in the surrounding greenery as the magical battle largely stalled between the two sides. The plan had been to wear the Venerates down, yet Uriel seemed to be content to throw his spear and otherwise observe in silence, standing as a silent warning against further ingress toward the top of the wall.

Only timing had preserved their chance at the gate itself, and the murder-holes used by the defenders were largely ignored by the massive phalanx of Heartwardens protecting the ram as it slammed into the reinforced gates.

If they could gain access to the City, their number of comparative Adepts and Contenders would likely prove the difference, she believed to her core. They’d brought the best of the Starhold with them: 40 Elites, 500 Contenders, 3,000 Adepts, and over 6,400 Initiates who could benefit from the Experience of the battle. 

The Starhold’s entire force was committed to the siege, and yet they couldn’t take ground. The Sunrise assault had already claimed the lives of three of their twenty Elites, and Yarilla felt a shiver run down her spine at the thought. The Nightlanders were made of stern material and had been blooded in the Evernight’s horrors, yet they were forestalled by a single Haelfar, looming like a titan of radiance upon the battlements.

“[FOR TALRINAR!]”

Her eyes snapped up as five shapes blitzed toward the battlements, and then she averted her eyes with a cry when an explosion of radiance whited out her vision. A moment later, when the spots obscuring her Tempered vision rapidly receded, she looked up to see the five Ascendants engaging the Venerate.

The sight rapidly devolved from hopeful into terrifying.

The Dawn-Lord had ascended from the walls in a burst of power the moment he’d met their assault, and now the battle was taking place above them—and it was not, despite their confidence, resolving itself in the expected manner.

Each blow from Uriel Aventus created a space-rupturing scar in the air, splitting reality as his spear struck with the force of a lightning strike, and she watched in stunned disbelief as one of her people’s most powerful warriors—the Ascendant Truthguard Commander Darvin Tyrn—was blasted into the earth by one such blow, cratering the dirt and obliterating the grass from the force of his impact.

The Svartfar male staggered upward from where he’d fallen, looking around like he was drunk, and seemed unable to comprehend what had happened to him. His armor was torn where he’d been struck, and his own guts were hanging over his stomach, bleeding his life force into the earth. Yarilla turned away when he collapsed to his knees and vomited his own vital fluid, and turned back to the battle overhead, marked by the sunburst radiance of each spear strike from the unstoppable Venerate.

Fear replaced hope when she did.

How? She asked silently to Nocturne. What manner of monster is he?

*

Istarius Malev grunted at the shock rippling along his arms from the battering ram’s impact, hissing in another breath of air as he and his comrades drew it backward, pulling the enchanted pylon of steel toward its launcher and setting it for the next attack. The siege of the Moonrise Gate was going about as well as they could presently hope, but that in and of itself was a generous estimation. The forces that the Matriarch had deployed to take the gate, which she was herself leading, had run into a problem.

The psychotic Haelfar woman who had been prowling the battlements.

Initially, their attack had gone well, and they’d even managed to take sections of the wall from the defenders, with several of their people slipping into the city in the chaos that ensued.

That, however, had come to a screeching halt when she had arrived. Istarius had been among those waiting to ascend the aetherically reinforced ladders of darksteel when the Haelfar woman had landed like a psychological apocalypse. Her mere presence had driven the Svartfenn on the walls mad, seemingly out of nowhere, and Istarius had watched in stunned shock as his own people had started to gouge out their eyes or turn their swords upon themselves while screaming about things within their bodies.

He’d borne witness as two Elites had killed each other, ranting about ‘betrayal’ while stabbing one another with vicious hatred that seemed to spawn out of nowhere, and left them both ruined when they collapsed to the ground below. The battering ram’s first team, a full complement of ten Heartwardens, had gone mad next: running screaming from the gate and ripping at their own limbs while howling about something eating them from the inside.

Fear had washed over the entire assault force until Matriarch Yvrain and the four Ascendants with her had soared into the battle, contending with the nightmare Haelfar woman and dragging her airborne for a more profound confrontation. He’d barely had time to witness the colossal clash of power before he’d been ordered to man the battering ram. As an Adept of the Heartwardens, he’d been proud to march on the unwitting Haelfenn City.

That pride was slowly eroding as he stepped back after the steel pylon was emplaced, glancing at the immense gates as the battering ram’s runic matrices ignited and it slammed the blunt head of its body into the gates with a cacophanous boom. The gates shook, but held, and Istarius darted forward to aid his kin in resecuring it within the accelerator.

The sounds of battle had intensified while he’d been within the shadow of the sally gate, listening to the screams and roars of bloody combat echoing above them as the Starhold fought to wrest control of the gate from its defenders. Nothing was going as they’d expected. First, the City had been far too ready for them, as evidenced by the Legion of Haelfar—or what seemed like such—waiting for them on the battlements.

Second, they’d tried to split off to attack the wall from other directions, only to find that it had been so dangerously and heavily enchanted that the first ladders laid against it had been violently blown away, and the feedback had killed the Svartfenn holding them at the same time—tearing apart their bodies with aetheric force that left them as little more than bloodied, mangled corpses.

These lightlanders aren’t like the ones we’ve fought before. They’re almost reveling in this!

It was true, from what he’d witnessed. As he stepped back after the pylon was secured, he glanced up at the arch of the manastone gatehouse and steeled himself against the boom of impact, then turned back to resecure the pylon for another strike. The Haelfenn—not just Haelfenn, but the majority so—they fought seemed to thrill at the battle, roaring war cries and demanding challenge, some of them even issuing duel proclamations as if it were some sort of damned war game!

Sanity had gone out of the proverbial window the moment they’d engaged, and he’d witnessed more than one of their light-skinned cousins raging at a lack of appropriate challenge, demanding they be met by those of ‘relevant birth’ while slamming their blades against their shields.

And their Venerate was the worst of them.

His [Stormshade] Core trembled in his Dantian at the continued echoes of power she exuded, even while embattled by five Starhold Ascendants. Worse, the subtle feeling of unease he’d felt at her appearance only seemed to be climbing, exacerbating itself the longer the battle unfolded. They’d been promised the [Aetherium] and resources needed to bring the Starhold to untold glory—yet now, instead of a settlement of weak lightlanders, they’d encountered a City full of maniacs that seemed gladdened for the chance at open warfare.

This is madness, he thought to himself as he finished aiding the pylon’s resecurement and stepped back to wipe his brow, glancing up at the gatehouse again as the battering ram launched. What the hell sort of nightmare have we walked into?

*

Michael Johnson was not a hero.

Standing with the Archers behind the charging infantry, he knew that with great certainty. He’d enlisted in the Humanity Alliance to protect his homeland from Alien invasion, just like his brothers, but he’d never expected what they’d found. The Alliance’s victories over Champaign and the other settlements and disturbed towns and cities they’d found on their march had greatly emboldened their spirits, making them feel as though victory were inevitable.

With the Iron Duke at their head, Humanity’s ascension seemed inevitable.

Then they’d come to Dawnhaven, and their morale had finally met its match.

The Fantasies they fought raged with a mania that sent shivers down his spine, and despite the attacks he sent whistling toward the walls, he’d yet to feel a single injection of Experience from a kill. The initial march had been successful enough, bringing their battering rams to the colossal gates and sending their System-enhanced siege towers to the walls, but that was where their momentum had stalled.

The defenders hadn’t tried to destroy the towers; they’d let them land, and then they’d started to kill.

The Legions had flooded up the towers with victory on their lips, and that had lasted all of ten minutes before the roars of confidence had turned to screams of terror. Michael could still taste the vomit from seeing dismembered humans smashed off the ramparts and witnessing Contenders hurled away like unwanted refuse. Even now, the Iron Duke rode among them, roaring for them to hold courage and stand fast, while the Legions poured into the towers.

They’d secured parts of the wall, true enough, but the wall itself was immense—wide enough to fit a dozen large men abreast, and armed with enough defensive measures that the ballistae were basically useless. Even with two battering rams hammering at the gates with aetherial pistons accelerating the steel pylons, the gates remained unbowed; rebuffing every strike like they were living things, and entirely unimpressed by the effort.

The volleys from the Archers like him had been met with cries of ridicule from the defenders, and Michael’s own squad had already lost three to their own arrows, thrown like small javelins with enough force to blow through his comrades’ bodies like cannon shots. It was an impossibility that only existed in comic books and graphic novels prior to the Incursion, yet now he was witnessing it for himself.

A sudden roar of thunder in the cloudless sky split the battlefield, and Michael raised his eyes as something appeared over the battlements.

“Are those wings?” his squad leader, Jason Smith, asked in disbelief.

Michael followed the older man’s gaze to the black-armored creature above the wall, and a chanting roar from the defenders froze him in place for a moment.

“ACHILLES! ACHILLES! ACHILLES!”

Disbelief mixed with cognitive dissonance held him in place, and Michael distantly realized he wasn’t the only one. Even the Iron Duke had turned, wheeling his monstrous war horse to stare at where the winged, black-armored figure had appeared above the battlements.

The humanoid creature raised its sword, and thunder shook the earth in tune with it as scarlet lightning blazed around it, ripping holes in space that seemed to cleave reality in twain with every crackling blast of energy.

“What the hell is that?” Jason demanded. “These fantasies have goddamn angels?”

“That’s no Angel,” Alec said from beside the squad leader. “That’s a fucking nightmare, is what that is.”

“ACHILLES! ACHILLES! ACHILLES!” the defenders roared again fanatically.

“Why the hell are they chanting Achilles?!” Jason asked again.

“Maybe that’s the bastard’s name!”

“Why the fuck would a Fantasy have the same name as—”

Silence abruptly descended on the area as thunder roared overhead again, and Michael turned his eyes toward where the angel surged forward, suddenly far closer than was comfortable. His bow rose in his hands, and arrows flew toward it from elsewhere, but none of them seemed to find purchase—bouncing off of some invisible field crackling with violet energy around its body where it hovered.

“Seventh Sword Art…” the being declared, its voice echoing across the battlefield as eyes were invariably drawn to it, locking onto the terrifying apparition with unbidden gravity, “...Sunder the Heavens!”

Michael’s eyes widened as the sword in the Angel’s hands seemed to elongate with that same terrifying red energy, growing until it was nearly twenty feet long as the armored creature swept it downward toward the Alliance’s lines.

He barely had time to scream as the red light obliterated everything.