Chapter 494: Book 8-5.3: Counterstrike

Battlefield Prescience. It was Commander Frederik Holster’s most prized ability. It was a technique he learned from his bond, an ancient map table, handed down by his family for nearly a hundred years. The ability to foresee movements on the battlefield just before they happened would have been priceless for an army commander.

Unfortunately, despite the name, it could do little more than provide Frederik with bumps of intuition.

However, the ability did have a more useful aspect. As long as he connected with the map and spent Animus, the table, which was filled with sand, pebbles, and bits of metal that should represent military forces, would shift and change to reflect the battlefield. The time it took to reflect these changes depended on how much Animus or distilled Chaos he was willing to spend. So this morning, when the Verdanians finally answered with battle, his instincts screamed at him.

He used the map table, but couldn’t pinpoint where the problem was. It was only when he received urgent reports from the bunkers that he realised that he’d been looking at the wrong spot. Then, with the help of Commander Nikolas Campbelle’s battlefield connection, they found the threat and moved to neutralise it.

The news that the cannons were destroyed hit him hard, but he would fall to the Abyss before he let the Sorcerer take out the rest of the bunkers. With such a powerful Animus signature, the ancient map was able to reflect the enemy’s position easily.

He had to rush to the nearest bunker while letting Nikolas handle the fight. It took several minutes, but he got there while the enemy was still fighting. Foolish not to retreat or move on to the next target.

“Commander.” A gray-haired woman, with an unlined face, grease-stained arms, and with a physique that put him to shame, greeted him as soon as he entered the bunker. Siege Cannoneer Hilaera Salazar was from Ekelus City, and she was in charge of the weapons that City State had lent them.

“Enemy attack. Melissandra reported the cannon’s destruction. She’s keeping the enemy occupied. I need you to drop cannon shells on him.” He said fiercely.

Hilaera’s eyes widened and her broad lips thinned in anger. “Coordinates?”

“Here,” Frederik said as he gestured to his bodyguards to unfold the map table.

He infused it with nearly half of his remaining Animus and directed it to focus on the easternmost bunker. The sand shifted to reflect the terrain, including the river and the bunker. Several pebbles shifted to reflect his people, while he tossed a gold coin, worth hundreds of Shekels, on the surface. The coin spun until it settle on an edge, then moved towards the river bank.

“They’re about to escape!” He growled.

“Don’t worry, the cannons, they are ready,” Hilaera said. She closed her eyes and Animus rolled off her back in waves. They focused on the three cannons that were there and sunk into the chambered shells. “Shift cannon one’s angle by five degrees, two’s by six, three’s by eight. On my mark, get ready to launch. Now.”

Twoom! Twoom! Twoom!

The two of them eagerly watched the table, anticipating at least some reaction. But…nothing. Instead, the coin slipped into the river and moved north.

“What happened?” he asked.

“The target blocked or avoided the shells,” Hilaera said after a long moment. “No matter, you have the Animus signature now. Whenever it appears on the battlefield, we can strike.”

Mouth set in a grim line, Commander Frederik could do nothing but agree.

________

“Er, I wasn’t trying to hide!” Virgil protested out of sheer reflex. A moment later, he realised that Sadeen was just teasing him, from the way her eyes sparkled. And of course, that smirk…

How?

That was the question that ran around his mind and wouldn’t leave him be. His squad had been stuck in this strange and wondrous place for years. He missed so much from his children’s lives, but he buried it at the back of his mind. There were many, many events, good and bad, that happened over the past year, in this place called the Siderious, but all of that mattered little right now. Sadeen…his wife and the love of his life.

He staggered a couple of steps towards her, and she gracefully strolled closer. Her every movement was mesmerizing, and even though he knew that most of it was due to how her bloodline and Heritage worked, he didn’t mind indulging. A little part of him was able to resist, but since he had willingly partaken of her grace, he didn’t mind.

“Shall we leave the two of you alone for a while? Say a day or two?” Balliol Muryh asked drily.

“Do that later, we have to gather the Chaos dust and Shards before the Warforged do,” Amiri said curtly.

“Oh, right,” he muttered. He and Sadeen held hands. He wanted to take her into his arms but his armour was in the way.

“Go and do what you have to,” she said with a grin. “I’ll be here.”

Virgil nodded, but all other thoughts in his mind had been blown away. Craig Zorin grabbed his shoulder and pointed towards the floor, where the Chaos Shards remained. Nodding in understanding, he extruded his Animus, which was as thick as molasses, and stretched it out to pry the shards out of the broken torsos. Balliol used his control over the winds to gather the dust particles and put them all into a flask.

“You’ve advanced,” Sadeen asked in surprise.

“Yes, and more.” Virgil sighed. “We’ve had little choice to survive.”

“Don’t dawdle!” Inquisitor Sarra Gorlyn snapped. “Those humanoid ones will come out soon. I’d rather not waste time and effort fighting them.”

They dared only take a couple of minutes to gather as much of the crystalline Chaos as they could. Afterwards, they left what they couldn’t reach and hurried back through the tunnels.

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“Will you tell me why you haven’t returned home?” Sadeen whispered in his ear. “Our children have missed you.”

“No more than they’ve missed you,” Virgil said. “You came from outside, didn’t you? You clashed with the Whisperer?”

“She’s the reason?”

“One of them,” Virgil smiled wryly. “There are many other reasons. Don’t worry, I’ll show them all to you.”

“I look forward to it.”

But her sultry voice hinted at different things. Virgil shuddered in anticipation. Thankfully, they’ve cleared enough space to have privacy in their base camp.

__________

As soon as she arrived back in the middle of the two halves of the town, Yuriko hurried to the muster point next to the south observation tower. As she half expected, Marron and Trevor hadn’t returned, and based on the sounds of battle, were still engaged with the Federation Army. She jumped up to the walls and called Fri’Avgi to hand, both stopped once she saw the battlefield.

A small group of militia, along with Armsmaster Trevor Byrne, were disengaging from battle. She could also see Marron engaged in a strafing battle with another enemy Knight, the archer that had given her so much trouble. Marron was some distance from the others but was much closer to the walls. She also spotted the fast-moving dagger man popping in and out of melee range against Trevor.

From the enemy encampment, she saw several hundred men and women forming into infantry squares. Oh! Land raptors and Kadracki rangers! They swept in behind the encampment and were galloping towards Trevor’s squad. In less than a minute, they would be cut off.

Beside her, the militia and reserve fighters looked on nervously, but the fight was well out of conventional Plasma Caster range.

After her quick survey, Yuriko decided to join in. She leapt from the wall and yelled “Help Marron!” to Saki.

She headed straight to Trevor, hoping to catch the daggerman and deal with him in the process, but she’d probably end up in a skirmish with the rangers. Sunshards spilt out of her artefact and formed a protective cyclone around her. As for the Adamant Guardian Seals she used up, well, she still had a third ready. Remaking the Seals in her Anima wasn’t a quick process, but she’d already recovered the spent lumens during her swim.

Sure enough, Trevor noticed her as soon as she left the wall, and had his squad move towards her. They were engaged in melee with an equal number of Federation spearmen, while the backline pelted each other with plasma bolts, arrows, or those spherical bullets from their hand cannons. So far, Yuriko could see each side fighting to deplete the other’s Animus defences, and already, some of the Fields were wavering.

Trevor, as befitting a Knight, was engaged in his counterpart. They were several dozen paces away from the clashing warriors. Trevor’s glaive swung, Animus light lingered in the air, and Yuriko had the feeling that the afterimages were just as dangerous as the steel. The dagger man certainly didn’t come anywhere close to it, and it resulted in limiting his movements.

As she expected, the Kadracki rangers headed straight towards her, but before she could make a move, they divided and moved away from her from nearly fifty paces away and started shooting at her with short recurve bows and bodkin arrows. Her sunshards deflected or destroyed the projectiles, but enough of them struck her condensed aura to make her wince. The narrow, tapered arrowheads laden with Animus cracked through the first layers of her protection easily, and in time, it would destroy the rest of her condensed Anima.

She abandoned using her sunshards to defend and sent them to attack, but the distance was at the extreme of her shards’ range. She used Fri’Avgi to block while flinging ball bearings charged with Empowered Strike.

She was accurate enough that she hit where she aimed, but anyone wounded immediately pulled back, doubly so if she actually hit the raptors. Any slight scratch and the rangers spun around and fled faster than she could blink her eyes. Hmmm.

She changed her target to the mounts, and soon enough nearly a dozen rangers had pulled back. That left more than a hundred.

They moved to surround her, but she wasn’t about to stay still. She crouched and gathered her strength, looping her aura and coiling in beneath her feet. Once she was ready, she lunged and crossed the intervening fifty paces in the blink of an eye. The land raptors reared back as her light flared, their heads shaking and eyes blinking. She focused all of her might on one target, sending sunshards and an arclight from her arming sword. All the while, Fri’Avgi was held in one hand, resting on her shoulder. As soon as she slashed with the arming sword, she dropped it from her hand and caught it with her kinesis. If floated behind her as she channelled Animus into its reservoir so that it would be ready for another strike.

Her target was torn to shreds. What remained of him, or maybe her, was just red mist, scales, feathers, and broken bits of leather. The remaining riders spread out but kept trying to pepper her with bolts. Where was their Knight leader? This would be nothing but a massacre if she continued.

A jolt of disquiet hit her all of a sudden, and she turned to look. At her brother.

Marron’s and the archer’s battle had heated up. Both were attacking with their most powerful skills. Yuriko ran towards them. She could see that both had several wounds already, and their protective Fields were riddled with holes. There were several paper talismans stuck on Marron’s body, Niamh’s healing charms.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Why did she get that dreadful feeling?

Wheeee! Twoom!

Eyes widening, she raised her hand and activated her Adamant Guardian Seal. Several cannon shells struck her, were blocked by the Seal, and sprayed its fiery payload around. At the same time, Marron roared and a powerful crescent shot blasted towards the archer. Then he made the mistake of turning to look at Yuriko.

The archer released an arrow that blazed with Animus straight at the crescent shot, in an attempt to deflect it.

The projectiles passed within inches of each other. The crescent plasma bolt sheared off the archer’s arm and shattered her recurve bow.

The arrow…struck Marron just as he turned his head back towards the archer. His neck snapped back and he fell, the arrow sticking out of his face.

Red light replaced Yuriko’s gold.

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