The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 467

JASMINE FLAMESWORTH

As the mana surged violently off to the east, another dragon flew over the Wall, speeding away with frightening urgency. I glanced over at Helen but found no answers; she was just as uncertain as I was.

The Wall’s defenders, adventurers from guild halls all over Sapin, lined the top of the colossal structure, staring nervously eastward over the Beast Glades. There was little we could do except watch and hope nothing approached, but it seemed like Arthur’s caution was borderline prescient; it hadn’t even been a full day since he went into his refuge beneath the Wall.

Lance Mica Earthborn came down from where she had been flying high above, hovering in the open air in front of us. Her stone eye, black as a cloudy night sky, gave her a fearsome look. “That was one of Vajrakor’s guards, I’m certain of it. Unbelievable. If they’ve left the cities undefended, I’ll…” She trailed off with a sigh and a shrug. “By rock and root, what exactly am I going to do about it? But they shouldn’t be leaving their posts. The rift must be under attack so they’re going to defend it. The only thing that makes sense, really.”

“If there is a force in this world that can defeat the dragons, then this is all for naught anyway,” Helen said matter of factly. “As for us, all we can do is the job that was entrusted to us. Arthur lies vulnerable beneath our feet. We need to keep him safe and whole long enough for him to accomplish his goal. That boy’s been fighting for us since he was fourteen years old. Now it’s our turn to fight for him.”

Lance Mica nodded gravely. “He’s our best hope, dragons or no dragons.”

“I wish he was here now,” Angela Rose said, leaning over a crenelation and looking down. “Whatever’s happening out there, it’d be a lot less scary if I knew our resident Lance Godspell was protecting us, and not the other way around.”

Lance Mica scoffed. “Well, you’ll have to make do with just me, but I’ve been—”

“What’s that?” Angela asked, leaning a little farther out and staring into the trees. “There’s something moving in the shadows.”

The Lance flew twenty or so feet away, then cursed and wheeled around. “Man your posts, the enemy is—”

Dozens—hundreds—of spells erupted from the shadows of the trees. It shouldn’t have been possible; no sizable force could move so quietly and without a glimmer of mana signatures, and yet somehow the Alacryans were right on top of us.

Lance Mica batted away a handful of spells and dodged others while conjuring plates of stone to deflect as many more as possible. Bolts of fire and lightning, spears of ice and air, and bullets of every element collided with the front of the Wall or the gates far below, while more spells were aimed at the adventurers standing atop the structure.

Like ants, hundreds of Alacryans poured out of the trees that were cut back a couple hundred feet from the base of the Wall to provide better line of sight to the ground—not that it’d helped.

Spells began to rain from the top of the Wall, but shields of a dozen different shapes and colors absorbed or deflected most of the damage. All around me, adventurers were shouting for orders or running to get to their positions, caught out of place by the suddenness of the assault. Helen was directing traffic, but she had her bow in hand, and with every order shouted, she loosed an arrow down into the oncoming army. _{freēwebnovel.com}

“Angela, you’re supposed to be with Durden at the vault!” Helen ordered, letting off another shot.

Angela Rose hesitated before nodding and hurrying away, pushing past other adventurers who were rushing to the Wall’s edge to start casting their own spells. There was too much traffic to wait for the long elevators, so she leaped down a flight of stairs and vanished from sight.

A round blade of wind hissed through the air between Helen and me, forcing us both to dodge away. It clipped a conjurer across the side of his neck behind us, taking him to the ground with a surprised yell of pain, then curved around and came back. I caught it on a wind-imbued dagger and deflected it back in the direction it had come from, but it carved a wide arc through the air and returned once more, this time bearing down on Helen.

A shield of dark rock appeared in front of her, catching the disc but shattering under the force of its impact. A mana-infused arrow hissed through the remaining rubble, carving its long arc down into the army below. I didn’t see who the arrow struck, but the cutting disc of wind-attribute mana dissolved only a moment later.

Below, I saw a black blur speed away from the enemy forces, and then a cacophonous crack rent the air, followed by the trembling of solid stone beneath my feet..

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A single towering, broad-shouldered, horned man had stepped forward from the enemy’s front line. The black streak had come from him. Now, a sphere of gleaming darkness—solid, black metal—appeared in front of his outstretched hand before again flying at the reinforced gate at the Wall’s base.

Another crash, another tremble.

A surge of mana responded, buttressing the structure’s stone and metal with magic. “The reinforcement is holding!” someone shouted, their words heavy with relief.

“But for how long?” Helen asked under her breath.

A brightly burning comet appeared in the sky above the battlefield, hovering for only an instant before plummeting down toward the man. I had to look away from the brightness, but the following flash and concussive blast nearly knocked me off my feet. I grabbed the soldier next to me, steadying myself and her at the same time, then returned my gaze to the battle.

The ground all around the horned man and the Alacryan frontline was scorched and blasted, but he didn’t seem harmed at all. In fact—though it could have been the distance playing tricks on me—it looked like he was grinning. With a whip-crack flourish, he sent another projectile at the gates, and the Wall trembled.

“Not long enough,” I told Helen, already moving.

Instead of wasting time with the elevator, or even the stairs, I bolted across the top of the Wall, planted one foot firmly on a merlon, and leapt out into open air. The buildings of the Wall’s interior town were far, far below, but they rose toward me rapidly.

Concentrating air-attribute mana beneath one foot, I caught some of my own momentum, slowing me perceptibly before my weight broke through. I repeated this again with the alternating foot, and then yet again, like I was running down the air itself. Despite flying down the Wall’s interior side at great speed, when I hit the ground a few seconds later, I didn’t burst apart on the hard stone but instead pushed the collected momentum forward into a dead sprint toward the interior of the main eastern gates.

Dozens of adventurers were already gathered there, conjurers holding fireballs in their bare hands or swirling with freezing air next to augmenters imbued with mana, some wrapped in stone or with burning weapons. Stone pillars had been pulled up from the ground to support the gate, and the soil was grown over with venomously green, thorny vines.

The gates rang like an enormous gong as another projectile struck from outside. The mana pouring through the Wall’s interior to reinforce it was like a physical presence in the air, but there was a whining, strained element to it that told me the defensive measure wouldn’t hold out much longer as hoped.

A scream punctuated through the resounding crash at the gates, and a man plunged down the inside of the Wall, only to be caught moments before striking the ground by a condensed cloud of wind and water. Outside the gate, I heard the earth shifting and stone grinding against stone.

The gates burst apart as an enormous black iron spike ripped through it, large enough and with so much force that it cracked the foundations of the Wall around it.

As one, the defenders flinched back. Many had already conjured shields or other protective barriers that saved many lives, buthe giant spike split into hundreds of spear-sized slivers, scattering death like so many thrown dice. Stone burst, mana cracked and collapsed, and ice shattered as the spears carved a bloody swath through our number.

Crawling to my feet—having thrown myself beneath a barrage of the black iron spears—I stared through the newly punched opening. Hundreds of Alacryans were charging toward us, weapons and spells raised. Outside the shattered gates, the battlefield was littered with gleaming shards of some black crystal. The Lance kneeled amidst the wreckage. She seemed stunned, as if she’d taken a mighty blow.

As I wavered on whether or not to rush to her side, the shattered remnants of crystal began to rise and fly to her, snapping into place all over her body like plates of armor. She stood, and a wall of gravity, visible as a distortion in the air that raced ahead of her, pulling the dust to the ground and crushing the soil down several inches, barreled out toward the approaching soldiers.

The hard-packed ground moved beneath her feet, and five black fingers curled up from the soil, closing in around her like a fist. She raised one arm, and a huge stone hammer was suddenly clenched in her fist. She swung it straight down into the metal palm with all her might.

Stone and metal screeched as both hammer and conjured appendage shattered, but the gravity wave had been interrupted, subsiding just before striking the charging army. Lance Mica cast a calculating look back through the tunnel mouth, and then she was flying through it at speed, back into our ring of defenders.

“For Dicathen!” she bellowed, hovering ten feet in the air above us, her hammer gripped in both hands.

“For Dicathen!” the adventurers shouted in response, their voices resounding through the fortification.

A gout of green flame spread out ahead of the charging Alacryans, burning away the thickly tangled vines, then an obscuring mist spilled out of the tunnel mouth, hiding the enemy from sight. An instant later, spells began firing out at us. As one, our cohort returned fire, dumping everything we had into the gap.

“Choke the breach with the bodies of their dead,” Lance Mica growled.

Suddenly the mist fell out of the very air, revealing the progressing soldiers, hidden behind their conjured shields. They struggled to progress forward, their feet dragging across the ground as if they couldn’t lift them.

An answering bellow came from within the tunnel, and then the horned man burst out, flying over the Alacryan soldiers and colliding with the Lance. The two crashed through the wall of a nearby building and vanished from sight, as the Alacryans were once again speeding forward.

Ducking beneath a beam of orange fire-attribute mana, I darted forward and threw myself at the first enemy I reached. A panel of mana appeared just where I struck, catching the blow and turning it aside. He raised a spear in response, thrusting in turn at my ribs. Whirling, I caught the spear on one dagger and moved it aside as I tossed the other dagger in the opposite direction. A panel of mana appeared to protect a different Alacryan soldier, but the dagger, held within a fist of air-attribute mana, curved around behind my target and drove in between his shoulder blades. The spear went limp in his grasp, then my first dagger sank into his chest. With a twist of mana, the dagger in his back leapt to my hand.

Recalling everything I had been taught about how the Alacryans fought and the way their battle groups were structured, I searched for their Shields, those mages who focused on protecting the others. All over the battlefield, swirling barriers of fire and wind appeared to deflect the spells and blows of my allies, and we were quickly losing the game of numbers as more and more of the Alacryans poured through.

As I ducked past a Caster slinging bolts of condensed lightning, a building behind us exploded outward, raining rubble down on the battlefield. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Lance Mica swinging her hammer with enough force to distort the air around her, and each blocked blow seemed to ripple outward from the impact and send tremors through my bones.

Her opponent—a Scythe, I was certain—deflected the blows with a towering shield of black iron that rang like a giant bell with each strike. He wore a look of ecstasy, reveling in the combat. Thankfully, he had eyes only for her. But I had no time to gawk at their fight.

A Striker closed in on me, orbs of white-blue lightning spinning around them. A gusting barrier of wind moved with them, and not far behind, a Caster channeling mana into fiery bolts fixed me with a dire stare. As the Striker swung with his bare fist, the lightning orbs moved in an echo of the blow. I leapt back, imbuing mana into both daggers as I looked past the Striker to the rest of his battle group.

The twin daggers flew, curving out around either side of the Striker, one arcing toward the Caster while the other flew farther, aimed at the Shield’s core. The wind enveloping the Striker pulled away in a cyclone of dust, flying even faster than my weapons to intercept them. At the same time, I lunged forward, pushing a burst of air-attribute mana in front of me to knock the Striker off balance. His orbiting balls of lightning cast about in the wind like fireflies, and I flitted between them to drive a wind-wrapped fist into his solar plexus.