Chapter 44: Just What I Needed
The fireball slammed into the stone with the force of a meteor, the blast deafening and blinding. The wall shuddered under my boots, heat washing over me as the air turned thick with the stench of burnt hair and charred flesh.
"Fuck!" I spat, blinking through the haze as three men screamed and toppled from the wall, their armor glowing red like a blacksmith's forge before they hit the ground below.
The goblins on the forest's edge weren't just standing there, their orbs pulsed brighter with each guttural chant, voices like gravel grinding together. Another fireball spiraled into existence, the runes around the orb spinning faster and faster.
"Fucking shamans!" I shouted again, my voice cutting through the chaos. I didn't care who heard, the last time I'd seen these bastards, I'd barely made it out alive.
Freya was already shouting orders, her sword pointing toward the robed figures. "Archers! Mages! Drop those fuckers now!"
Arrows whistled overhead, fireballs roared back in reply, and suddenly the siege wasn't about keeping beasts off the wall, it was about surviving the sky itself. A guard beside me screamed as a bolt of lightning from a shaman's staff drilled through his helmet and came sizzling out his chestplate, leaving a smoking hole and the smell of coppery blood.
I ducked low, yanking another guard back just as a jagged shard of rock, conjured from nowhere, tore through the space where the man's head had been a second earlier. "You owe me one!" I barked, shoving him toward cover.
Freya slashed a climbing beast across the face, black ichor spraying the stone. "Stay sharp, Kaizen! If those bastards break the line, it's over!"
"Yeah, thanks for the reminder, Captain Obvious!" I yelled back, kicking another beast in the jaw before driving his blade through its skull.
More shamans emerged from the treeline, maybe a dozen now, their chants overlapping into a sick, rhythmic cadence that seemed to make the very air vibrate. For every one they dropped with arrows, two more stepped forward. And behind them, I could see shapes, huge, hulking, moving shapes that made the normal beasts look like house pets.
The whole wall shook again as another fireball slammed into the parapet, showering me in chunks of molten rock. My ears rang, my teeth hurt from the vibration, and my patience was already fucked beyond repair.
"Fuck me sideways…" I muttered, shoving a loose brick off the edge before it could roll under someone's boot.
One of the shamans raised his staff higher than the rest, his orange-red orb flaring like a goddamn miniature sun. I didn't need a crystal ball to guess what was coming.
"DOWN!" I roared, throwing myself over a stack of crates as the blast ripped through the air. The explosion hit like a dragon's sneeze, two guards went screaming over the wall trailing fire like human torches. The smell hit a second later.
My stomach turned, but I swallowed it down. No time for puking.
Freya was still in the thick of it, rallying the guards like she'd been born on a battlefield. She ducked an arrow, gutted a beast, and barked, "Kaizen! Left flank! NOW!"
I almost told her to kiss my ass but then I saw the three climbing bastards she meant. Big, ugly, all muscle, claws digging into the stone like it was wet clay.
I dashed over, boots slamming on the blood-slick walkway, and caught the first one mid-haul. My blade went in under its chin and out the top of its head, black ichor spraying my face like rotten oil. The second one swiped at me, claws catching my shoulder armor hard enough to jolt my arm numb.
"Oh, you're dead," I growled, planting a boot in its face and kicking it off the wall. I didn't watch it splatter, the third one was already up.
We clashed in a mess of claws and steel. It caught me across the ribs, pain exploding hot, but I didn't stop, I drove the sword through its gut, twisted, and dumped it back over the edge. My chest burned, my breath came in ragged gasps, but I was still standing.
Somewhere to my right, a guard shrieked, one of the shamans had nailed him with a spell that turned half his body into stone before shattering him like pottery. Pieces of him skittered past my boots.
"Holy shit…" I muttered. "They're not just fire-chucking assholes now."
The shamans' chanting got louder, faster. Even without magic senses, I could feel the pressure in the air building, like the sky itself was holding its breath.
"Kaizen!" Freya's voice cut through the noise. She was crouched low behind the battlement, eyes locked on something beyond the treeline. "Look!"
I followed her gaze.
Through the smoke, through the shadows, the big shapes I'd glimpsed earlier were stepping forward. Massive, broad-shouldered… and chained. Chained by the shamans. Their roars shook the ground even from here.
The fucking goblins had pets. Big ones.
"...Oh, this is about to suck."
The chains snapped one by one.
It didn't sound like metal breaking. it sounded like the sky being ripped in half. The first beast stepped forward, each footfall cracking the dirt like it weighed as much as a house. Its skin was a mix of matted fur and thick plates of bone, its jaw big enough to take my head off in one bite. The other two weren't much prettier, one had tusks like a war elephant, the other's arms were so long it used them like extra legs.
The shamans didn't just release them. They commanded them, jerking their staffs like puppet strings.
"Oh, great. Giant killer pets with GPS," I muttered.
The first beast charged. Not at the gates, no, this bastard went straight for the wall like it was trying to shoulder-tackle a mountain. The impact shook me off my feet and sent a guard tumbling to the street below with a sickening crunch.
"GET THOSE THINGS DOWN!" someone bellowed. Arrows, bolts, and spells rained down, but the beasts barely flinched. One fireball from a mage actually bounced off its bone plating like a spark hitting wet stone.
"Freya!" I shouted over the chaos. "Do these things even die?"
She didn't answer, she was already moving, leaping to another section of the wall with a squad in tow.
One of the long-armed freaks tried to climb up right in front of me. Its claws dug into the stone and ripped chunks out like bread. I drove my sword into one of its wrists. It roared, jerking back, but didn't fall. Instead, it swung at me so fast I barely ducked, its claws caught the top of my hair and left a sting on my scalp.
"Close call number three today…" I gritted, jamming the blade into its eye socket this time. That did the trick, it howled and dropped backwards into the horde, vanishing under a frenzy of snapping jaws and claws from the smaller beasts below.
A horn sounded from somewhere deep in the city, three long blasts. Not evacuation orders. Distress.
The tusked one rammed another section of the wall. Stone cracked. Masonry fell away in slabs. Archers scrambled back to avoid falling with it.
"Shit, they're going to breach…"
A boulder the size of a wagon wheel, hurled by some catapult-like creature, cut me off and smashed into the wall two meters away, spraying me with rock splinters sharp enough to slice skin. My left arm burned, I glanced down to see a thin line of blood, nothing too bad.
The shamans kept chanting, louder, more frenzied, their eyes glowing with the same orange-red light as their orbs. One of them raised his staff, and a ripple of heat rolled across the battlefield. Every smaller beast stopped climbing for half a heartbeat. Then they started faster.
"Oh yeah," I said under my breath, gripping my sword tighter. "This is definitely going to be one of those days."
A soldier beside me screamed as a goblin leapt from the walltop into his chest, dagger-first. I shoved it off him, but the man was already gone, the blade had gone straight into his throat. The goblin hissed, lunged at me, and I cut it down with a single swing.
The air smelled like blood, burnt flesh, and smoke thick enough to chew. My hands were slick on the grip.
I risked a glance at the countdown. 58 hours, 17 minutes, 08… 07… 06. Still so much fucking time left.
And that's when the biggest beast, the bone-plated one, let out a roar so deep I felt it in my teeth. It dropped to all fours, claws gouging the dirt, and started climbing the wall where I was standing.
"Perfect. Just what I fucking needed."
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