Chapter 16: DD2 Chapter 010 – Fire

Dense cloud-cover blanketed the night’s sky up above. The sickly-green moon and all the stars were obscured by the thick, fluffy clouds that released a constant stream of powdered snow down onto the village of Cawic. Cast-iron braziers were interspersed along the length of the circular wall that surrounded the small village. The residents had been going without firewood during the day, and huddling together in the tavern at night, to better conserve their limited supplies of fuel that was the only source of light for the defenders on the wall.

Not for the first time, Arilla wished that she had a perception skill to help alleviate her night blindness, but then again she was also in dire need of a skill to make her faster, and another to give her a ranged attack. For all of her enduring might, she was still at the mercy of any fleet-footed archer who could see in the dark. That she would realistically only be able to shore up one of these major weaknesses when she eventually hit bronze was less than ideal, but as Typh always said, The Great System provides. Even lacking in those three areas, Arilla truly excelled everywhere else. Her high strength score and durability allowed her to stand toe to toe with some of the most terrifying beasts Astresia had to offer. Provided of course, that they were willing to fight on her terms, which most creatures usually lacked the good sense to avoid.

The burning braziers made it so that she could see whatever made its way up onto the walls, but ruined her essentially mundane night vision in exchange. Given the darkness of the night and the raised lip of the outer wall, she couldn’t even see the snow on the ground below, making her vigil an especially nerve-wracking one. She was quietly in awe of the villagers of Cawic, who had been doing this every night since the first snowfall, when wild beasts had announced themselves by swarming over their poorly manned wall and very nearly consuming the entire settlement. 

It had cost them dearly to survive that first night, and now they were much better organised to prevent such a recurrence. The regularity of the nightly raids gave them something predictable to defend against, with weapons, patrols and what passed for reserve forces put in place so that they could react to any form of assault. Kalle, despite her age, was something of a genius, holding a village for so long with a collection of elderly adventurers, classless youths, non-combat classers, and a smattering of anti-social hunters who had chosen Cawic to live in because they didn’t play well with others.

Cawic should have fallen weeks ago, and now that Arilla had arrived, she didn’t intend to let it go down on her watch. The few hours of hastily stolen sleep and a fresh purpose had revitalised her more than she had anticipated. The warrior was eager, if anything, to help, as if a victory here could make up for abandoning Rhelea. 

Still, her night-blindness was an issue. For all she knew, a horde of goblins could be climbing the walls in silence while she warmed her hands by a brazier. However, after thinking about it, she was fairly confident that she’d at least be able to smell goblins over the wood smoke long before they made it to the top of the village’s fortifications. 

Arilla was standing guard over a perfectly smooth portion of the wall where the regular brickwork abruptly transitioned into a solid block of irregularly shaped stone. Typh’s spells had repaired the breach in the defences with moulded rock to fill the gap that had been left when some form of giant had ripped through the defences in the previous night’s attack. As reassuring as the swift repair was, Typh hadn’t had the time to redo the warding along the new stonework, and lacking any relevant stonemason skills, this patch of magically sculpted stone was far weaker than any other part of the wall. If there was any intelligence behind these attacks, and everything pointed to there being one, then her spot on the wall would see the brunt of the fighting.

Arilla closed her eyes and allowed herself a deep inhalation. The cool air invigorated her as it filled her lungs and sharpened her focus. She mentally prepared herself for what was about to come. 

Kalle had laid it on pretty thick, but the message was simple: Cawic would be attacked from dusk till dawn. The invading beasts would not retreat and would fight to the death, regardless of how injured they became. For reasons that remained unexplained, the intelligence behind the nightly attacks failed to capitalise on their weaknesses and seemed far more intent on killing the higher-levelled defenders than it did on delivering a fatal blow to the village. The mystery puzzled her as it was a task which could easily be achieved, by destroying the granary or simply attacking again during the day when the militia were exhausted from the night before.

Exhaling, Arilla felt the energy in the air, not in the literal sense, although the ambient mana was slightly higher than what she was used to in Rhelea, but in the fact that there was this vivid sense of anticipation that overlaid every one of her actions as she prepared herself to fight. For the first time in months her newly ranked up class was content. Typh’s return had fixed so many things that she hadn’t even noticed were wrong. That hole in her life that she had first tried to fill with alcohol and then with charity was suddenly gone, filled by the dragon's mere presence. Her class purred its content approval every time she drew her blade in Typh’s defence.

Arilla would never admit it to his face but, end of the world or not, she was glad that Typh was back in her life.

“They’re here. I’m casting a spell so you can see them; don’t look directly into the light if you value your eyesight,” Typh announced, his voice travelling along the length of the walls on motes of mana so that it was heard by all the defenders at an almost conversational volume, the dragon back to the act of pretending to be a normal mage.

“I wonder how many people will die tonight to keep that disguise up,” Arilla wondered out loud.

“What was that?” Machero asked, the thin-faced youth looking across from the brazier at her.

“It’s nothing,” Arilla said. Regretting that she had been paired with the boy on what was quickly becoming in her mind her stretch of wall. 

Machero was there supposedly to watch her back, armed with a bundle of javelins and a shortsword that could charitably be described as cobbled together. Arilla strongly doubted that he would be of much help. Cawic’s blacksmith had long since melted down all of the available kitchenware and any spare tools into short blades and spear points to be wielded in the settlement's defence. Apparently, Machero wanted to be a warrior before all this, and was due to travel to Rhelea to use a class stone in the spring thaws. The boy had previously expressed concerns that his relatively peaceful life would have left him lacking the required accolades to qualify for a warrior class. A worry that after nearly a month's worth of fighting, Arilla was sure, had been soundly quashed.

As Typh promised, the night lit up like it was day. A bright ball of golden light rose up from above the gatehouse to hover a few hundred feet in the air, where it cast short shadows down around the defenders feet. Reaffirming Arilla’s decision to prioritise a perception skill, the false daylight also revealed a horde of creatures creeping forwards along the snow-covered ground towards Cawic. 

Looking at them she struggled to think of any word other than monster to describe them. Natural creatures or not, they were monstrous. Beasts with too many limbs or eyes raced forwards through the snow, spurred on by the abrupt change in the light. None, as far as she could see, looked humanoid, or at least nothing that didn’t more closely resemble an ape than a person. Each creature bore fangs, claws, horns, talons or spines, an assortment of natural weapons that made her pity anyone who wasn’t encased in thick runic-steel like she was.

Machero screamed. A ragged volley of arrows aided by the light flew from the walls to strike at the charging creatures. More arrows hit than didn’t, causing creatures to cry out in pain, joining their inhuman voices to Machero’s. Few, if any, beasts stopped moving as a result of their injuries, but the arrows kept going. The silent night suddenly filled with the sounds of battle. A roaring mass of darkness shot out from behind a distant hill at speed; the teeming sphere of shadows went straight towards and ultimately enveloped Typh’s miniature sun. After a few seconds of pulsing light, where the entire scene strobed between golden daylight and pitch-blackness, the walls were finally plunged back into darkness, hiding the horrors that Arilla now knew were fast approaching.

“Where are they! Where are they!” Machero yelled frantically, the boy’s nerve failing him as he clutched a javelin across his chest.

“They’ll be here soon enough. Just stand back and let me work,” Arilla answered coolly. The rapid crunch of freshly compacted snow accelerated as the creatures raced ever-closer to the walls from every direction. Their chance of taking the defenders by surprise had been blown by Typh’s brief light show. 

Arilla smiled a vicious smile as she donned her helmet. The thrill of battle filled her as she fully encased herself in her set of runic plate, supremely confident in her own safety thanks to the protective enchantments that were layered throughout it, Typh’s defensive runework being so much stronger than anything her own skills were currently capable of. She pushed mana from her well into her sword and armour, and after a few points were exchanged she felt her gear begin to resist her as the runes shone brightly with arcane power. Her reserves were nearly full at 748 MP, more than enough to ensure that she was good for a few serious exchanges.

All around Arilla golden arcs of light that originated from the gatehouse impacted creatures approaching the wall. Typh was clearly intent on treading the fine line between preventing the villagers from being overwhelmed, and revealing his true power as a peak iron rank classer. It was a problem that she didn’t envy, but she was glad that he was there as it meant that she didn’t have to worry too much about the welfare of Cawic’s villagers.

She heard the scrabbling of claws against stone at the base of the wall, and reached into the brazier with a gauntleted hand. The runes on her armour once again lighting up as she grabbed the cauldron of molten pitch warming in the open fire, and tossed it over the edge of the wall. Horrendous screams from far too many mouths followed, but no system prompts appeared to indicate that she had earned herself an easy kill. A handful of seconds passed and a four-clawed hand latched onto the edge of the parapet, the palm easily as large as her thigh. She levelled her zweihander like a spear and stabbed forwards with her blade. The sword point skewered the creature's hand between the webbing of its middle two fingers as she ground the blade down along the edge of the stone fortifications before she ripped her zweihander up through the back of the beast's hand. The appendage severed into two distinct parts connected only at the wrist. More inhuman screams followed and the creature fell back down the wall, colliding with something else on its descent.

“Arilla! Arilla!” 

Machero’s desperate screams caused her to spin around to see another creature already atop the battlements. The thin slit of vision in her helmet rendered her peripheral vision almost nonexistent, causing her to miss it until it lunged for the youth, a readied javelin a weak deterrent against the level 24 Night Gaunt. 

The creature looked like a stretched-out, emaciated bat, completely hairless with pale blue skin even under the flickering orange glow of the brazier’s fire. It had far too many ribs, at least twenty to a side, that gave it almost serpentine qualities, and it attacked Machero with long nine-inch-claws at the end of its prehensile leathery wings.

Needless to say nine-inch-nails were an absolutely terrible weapon when compared to a six foot long sword. 

Arilla pushed stamina into her [Dragon’s Blade] skill and jumped. Her strength score skyrocketed as she flew forwards along the battlements. With her huge sword held like a lance she slammed into the Night Gaunt, point-first, impaling the creature on her blade up to the wide crossguard. The blunt parrying hooks on her weapon ripped open a messy hole in the creature's ribcage as the impact from her leap forced her zweihander to move through the creature with little resistance. 

It screamed, oh how it screamed. High-pitched cries that vibrated the steel in her hands and sent Machero staggering back. Arilla felt [Dragon’s Resilience] aid her as she suffered through the onslaught. Her ears bled and her defensive skill viciously fought back against the creature’s offensive one while the Night Gaunt’s claws scrabbled ineffectually against her runeplate, likely costing her armour a few points of mana to resist the damage. She braced her boots against the smooth stone beneath her, and pushed stamina through [Dragon’s Blade]. Her SP trickled down while her strength score surged, power singing in her veins as she swung her sword out through the side of the Night Gaunt and into the body of a Frost Worm that had just crested the side of the wall.

The Night Gaunt died, torn almost in half, its essential mana released into the air, and a system notification reassured her that it wouldn’t be getting back up while Arilla had to suddenly contend with another enemy in front of her. Her zweihander had already cleaved a good few feet into the side of the worm, which leant half balanced against the edge of the wall. Icy blue blood pulsed out of the wound and down her sword with every beat of its heart. 

“Gods, how I hate fighting insects,” Arilla grunted between panting breaths, moments before the creature's maw opened and a beam of bright blue light shot out and hit her directly in the chest. 

She was knocked back, almost off the wall entirely as ice spread out over her body, jagged shards digging against the metal of her armour, which flared its runes in response. Her two skills [Dragon’s Mettle] and [Dragon’s Resilience] kicked into overdrive allowing her to shrug off the worst of the attack. The actual damage to her health pool was negligible; the pain barely even registered although perhaps that was from the numbing cold. 

Once again she channelled stamina through her skill and cracked the ice that had so swiftly formed around her body. With a single step she darted forwards and swung her sword at the giant worm before her single second of enhanced strength was up. The edge of her enchanted blade found the same wound as before and cleaved even deeper into the creature until her zweihander rebounded off the beast's thick bone plating.

The Frost Worm teetered precariously, an ineffectual javelin striking its head and glancing off into the night, before it crashed down onto the wall forming a bridge of flesh leading over the fortifications and into the village of Cawic. Arilla scarcely had the time to give Machero a nod before the next creature was on the wall, her opportunistic foes electing to climb up the Frost Worm's corpse rather than to try their luck with the smooth stone.

A pack of Twilight Hounds raced up the corpse of the Frost Worm. A dozen of the wolf-sized beasts running on six bounding legs, each one of them fading partially in and out of Creation in time with the flickering of the brazier's flames. They were on her in a flash. She had fought Twilight Hounds before in the pit when she was grinding her way to twenty, but never more than one at a time, or without the advantage of daylight to aid her. Blessedly the pack split upon the wall, half racing to the east towards the other defenders and the other six right at her.

She swung her zweihander at them and missed, the hounds either jumping over the blade or phasing through it as they momentarily transitioned into living shadows. Once they were inside of her reach they solidified and tried to tackle her to the ground. Their crushing jaws clamped down around her arms and legs. The creatures’ combined weight leveraged to pull her to the ground, and only by relying on her skill-enhanced strength was Arilla able to stay upright. 

Encased in rune-etched steel, Arilla felt the enchantments in her armour strain, the mana that fueled her protections running perilously low having already been depleted from the Frost Worm's beam and the Night Gaunt’s claws. Arilla liberally pumped her mana into her failing armour as fast as she could—the runes glowing brightly in response—burning stamina all the while through her one active skill, as she forced herself to stay standing against the beasts' persistent onslaught.

Her sword was far too large for her to swing now that they were in knife fighting range, but [Dragon’s Blade] only required that she wield a sword, not that she swing it. Straining with the weight of a two-hundred pound creature dangling from her wrist, she grabbed a Twilight Hound latched firmly around her sword arm and squeezed at its throat. The beast whined piteously as she slowly but surely choked it out. Its powerful jaws caused her metal vambrace to creak under the sustained pressure as its body thrashed below under her steady grip.

It phased out of her grasp before she could kill it, its packmates following its example as they raced past her. The hounds buffeted her as they ran back and forth along the walls appearing wholly in Creation only for long enough to try and knock her from her feet with full body tackles aimed high and low. She backed up towards the brazier's flames, aware that the bright light would make it harder for them to phase out of existence. Fighting Twilight Hounds was always a game of endurance, the creatures almost untouchable until they ran out of mana, at which point there was little separating them from a particularly aggressive wolf.

Arilla didn’t have time for that. And with six of them, she wasn’t sure she had the reserves to outlast them, not if she wanted to be useful afterwards. In order to win quickly, she would have to do something potentially very stupid.

“Machero you might want to leave now,“ Arilla warned.

“No I’m h—” he began to say, but Arilla wasn’t listening. 

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She grabbed the brazier with her offhand. The heat of the scalding steel was noticeable even through [Dragon’s Mettle]’s damage mitigation and her armour’s runic defences. She cranked [Dragon’s Blade] up to the max, her effective strength score rocketing to 252 for a single second. The disparity between her strength and her vitality was less than ideal, highlighted when the tendons in her arms screamed out in pain, as in that brief window of time she hurled the burning brazier into the centre of the pack of Twilight Hounds. The cast-iron frame of the brazier itself hit the lead hound, and pulped it beneath the weight of all that metal. Flaming pieces of irregular wood showered the remaining hounds. The individual fires were much smaller than the concentrated flames from the brazier, and with the cold and snow they surely wouldn’t last for long. But Arilla didn’t need long. With her sword in hand she waded through their ranks, hewing flesh and bone with every swing of her sword as the fresh fires kept them from phasing away.

When it was done, Arilla was gore-spattered and feeling a little tired, having burnt through far more stamina than she had been hoping to get away with. The fighting on the walls miraculously still seemed to be ongoing, clashes echoing out through the night on all sides, and Typh’s golden arcs intermittently lighting up the sky as he rained down destruction on the attacking creatures. The dragon was steadily creeping ever further beyond what a high-pewter mage was actually capable of, but if anyone noticed, they were unlikely to mention it before the morning. 

More monstrous beasts climbed the walls, and Arilla cut them down with Machero flapping about uselessly in the background. The stubborn youth refused to flee, although Arilla suspected that may have had more to do with his refusal to stray from the protection offered in her long shadow. 

The burning embers from the brazier eventually died, and Arilla had to make do with the light cast from the glowing runes on her sword. Their obscuring cloth-cover had been discarded in favour of the ever-dimming light that they provided as it was only that, and Typh’s occasional spells that lit up her section of the wall. When it came she nearly missed it. The creature was far too quiet for something that large. Its silhouette was indistinct, blending in with the night as its edges shifted unnaturally, reminding her of the Twilight Hounds from before, but where they resembled wolves, this reminded her of an ogre, the creature tagged only as a level 49 Umbral Hulk. 

It was the largest creature she had yet seen with one notable exception. At least sixty feet tall, with an oversized, shark-like head, it towered over the section of wall that she had spent her night defending. All hulking brawn and somehow stealth, it had knuckle-walked right up to her on its oversized arms without her noticing.

It hadn’t climbed the walls, but then it didn’t really have to. The creature wound back a massive fist the size of a stout tree as it punched towards her section of moulded wall. The spell shaped stone exploded outwards as its skill enhanced strike demolished Typh’s repair job, and once again left a gaping hole in the village’s defences. Having seen the strike coming Arilla had grabbed Machero and jumped, her inflated strength score, temporary though it may have been, coming into play yet again as she evaded the strike as best she could.

By leaping onto the creature's back.

It wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t graceful, but at the height of her temporary strength Arilla could leap a fairly considerable distance. Overshooting, she crested over the beast with Machero’s screams in her ears, and as she descended, falling down past its back, she struck out her enchanted sword, stabbing deep into its flesh and slowing her fall dramatically until she came to a stop firmly anchored into the Umbral Hulk’s lower back. The runes in her blade winked out as its mana well had finally run dry while it carved a long line down the creature’s broad back.

“Stay here!” she yelled at Machero.

“Where the fuck else am I supposed to go?” he yelled back, the youth desperately clinging to the edges of an armor-like piece of carapace as Arilla began to climb her way up the beast.

The Umbral Hulk was huge, and Arilla desperately hoped that its arrival signified a possible end to the attacking waves of enemies. Checking her status she realised that if this wasn’t the end, then she was going to be in trouble really soon. 

Name: Arilla Foundling

Species: Human

Age: 18

HP: 970/1040

SP: 159/1040

MP: 431/760

Strength: 30

Dexterity: 10

Vitality: 30

Intelligence: 1

Willpower: 2

Charisma: 15

Class: Dragon Guard - Level 37

Dragon’s Blade - Level 37

Dragon’s Compact - Level 37

Dragon’s Mettle - Level 37

Dragon’s Resilience - Level 37 

The Umbral Hulk didn’t take too kindly to being ridden, and tried its best to shake them off. Its efforts were rewarded when Machero was sent flying, landing somewhere in the snow, hopefully still alive. Arduously, Arilla climbed her way up, towards the head, drip-feeding her sword a little mana at a time so that she could stab into it and affix herself in place when it shook its body or batted its gigantic limbs in her general direction.

More times than she could count she nearly fell, swatted to the side like an annoying fly. Arilla had never felt so small as she desperately clawed her way up its back. Her armoured form clinging close to its body gave her a far more intimate understanding of its skills than she would have liked. 

The cloying shadows that gave it an indistinct silhouette smelt like death and stressed her armour and defensive skills even further. She felt her eyes water and her lungs burn from inhaling the intangible wisps of shadowstuff that clung to the hulk. Her panicked breaths only served to make the pain far worse, as inch by inch, hand over hand she climbed.

It was gruelling, but Arilla had felt the kiss of Rolf’s knife and lived. Climbing a giant in full armour when every breath was agony was child’s play by comparison to that feat.

Eventually she reached the nape of its neck, where she stood precariously on its shoulder, one hand out to steady herself, and the other on her oversized zweihander. From that height she could see everything, at least intermittently when flashes of gold illuminated the night. It was kind of pretty from her vantage point. Without the smell of shit and blood in the air, the scrabbling forms fighting one another in a life and death struggle seemed almost heroic, a weak line of defenders holding out against a force much larger than their own.

As tempted as Arilla was to stand and watch for a moment, she really didn’t have the time. With her class urging her on, she pushed every last drop of mana she had left through her sword and stressed her [Dragon’s Blade] skill to the limit as she swung. 

Her zweihander tore into the Umbral Hulk’s neck and hacked out a massive chunk of muscle, spine and blood. Bits of torn flesh splattered out in a gory arc and rained down on the wall below her. Without a sound, the huge beast went limp beneath her feet. Its shoulders slumped and the colossal creature toppled forwards over the wall, while Arilla fell back and away, a system notification pronouncing the creature’s death.

As the ground raced up to meet her, Arilla smiled.

For her at least, the siege of Cawic was over.

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