Serpentlord (Rise To Omniscience Book 9), page 20
She imagined she could see her own carefully placed forces walking along the rim. She knew it couldn’t be true, as they wouldn’t come all the way to the edge. Instead, they would remain hidden as commanded.
The going was slow, especially as they approached the narrowest point, taking them from a normal walk to a few shuffling steps every few seconds. Their force began to grow more packed in as the people in the rear exerted pressure, contrary to her orders. Elyssa gritted her teeth, tempted to leap from her position and sail back along the walls until she reached the people who were pushing.
A few good whacks across their heads would get them to stop being so impatient and follow their orders.
However, she remained where she was, knowing that she would be needed here as soon as the enemy sprung their attack. She was just reaching the very narrowest point and could already see the crowd speeding up as they were given more room when one of her guards nudged her in the shoulder.
“What is it?” she asked, turning to face him.
They were all pressed pretty closely together, so there was no need to raise her voice.
“A message just came, passed down from one of the healers,” the guard said.
Elyssa silently berated herself for being so distracted that she’d missed it coming. Sure, she was thinking of their plans, but with everyone squished this tightly together, she should have seen this message passed down.
“What is it?” she asked, hiding her annoyance.
“The message is from Morgan. He returned with Sarah, and she was badly injured. The healers say he looked to be injured as well.”
Elyssa had a strange sense of foreboding as her guard continued.
“He said that the city was under attack by cultists who were blowing themselves up and to warn you about it.”
Elyssa’s eyes flashed up to the tops of the walls, feeling her blood run cold. She’d known that the enemy was likely to use some sort of explosives to try and bury them. What she hadn’t known, or even expected, was that they would be the bombs. Worse, if they were powerful enough to injure Morgan and Sarah, they were definitely powerful enough to cause serious damage to their armies.
“Gilderon,” she said, already pushing herself up on a flow of Liquid Stone. “Get these soldiers out of here now!”
Elyssa was very happy that she had someone like him she could depend on. No useless or panicked questions, just action.
Gilderon’s voice cracked out, bellowing above the crowd.
“No one else is to enter the gorge! If you’ve just entered, back out! If you’re already more than halfway through, keep moving! Let’s try and make this as quick as possible!”
Elyssa watched as she rose, the soldiers beginning to react to the order. It was far slower than she’d have liked, but still, they were doing as they were ordered.
“Is something wrong, ma’am?”
Elyssa alighted on the right side of the cliffs, touching down some forty feet from the tree line where her forces were waiting in ambush. Seeing her there, the commander of this force, one of her own, came out of hiding to inquire as to what was going on.
“Yes,” Elyssa said, waving to the others in hiding. “We’ve just received some new information. There’s going to be a change of plans. The enemy…”
Elyssa trailed off, watching as two dozen green-tinged portals began opening all along the cliff’s edge, and the forms of cultists, covered in glowing, green lines, began to emerge.
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“The ambush is happening now!” Elyssa yelled, jumping into action the moment she saw those portals opening.
She didn’t have any information on these cultists, other than that they would explode and that their damage output was immense.
Hearing her yelling, her soldiers burst from hiding, making a run for where the portals were opening. Truthfully, Elyssa had no idea what she could even do. The gorge below was still packed full of soldiers, and despite the fact that they’d managed to get some of them out, there were still plenty packed inside.
She reached out with her ability, pulling the ground before the portals up in a wave, trying to block them off from the gorge and perhaps force them back into their portals. Even as the soldiers charged, Elyssa saw the cultists’ skin glowing brighter as they emerged, their faces fixed in insane grins.
The moment stretched out, as though frozen in time, the cultists glowing brighter and brighter and the walls of stone rising in their path. Her soldiers ran to intercept, the portal scrolls she’d given them unfurled.
Then the world abruptly sped up again and Elyssa plunged into the ground, her Liquid Stone skill giving her the ability to do so. Even as she sank, the cultists began blowing themselves up. She got a brief flash of green fire before she vanished from view, sinking deep into the earth.
The ground shook, massive chunks of earth being torn away. Even as she sank, the world came back into view – just for an instant. What she saw would give her nightmares for weeks to come. Fire everywhere. Burning soldiers trying desperately to get away. Crumbling walls of stone and a half-collapsed cliff face. Then she sank once more, dropping deep below the surface as the detonations continued going off.
She finally stopped when she was over a hundred feet down, the earth hollowing out around her and forming a sort of cocoon. There she sat, listening to the series of explosions continuing. Rationally, she knew there was nothing she could do. She’d been taken off guard by the type of attack the enemy had used.
The information had come to her less than a minute before the enemy’s appearance, giving them little time to react. She’d done the best she could, and yet, she couldn’t help blaming herself. Had she been smarter, wiser, or take more precautions, this wouldn’t have happened. Instead, she’d allowed a significant portion of her forces to become trapped. She’d led them all to their deaths, and it was entirely her fault.
The explosions continued going off for the next thirty seconds or so before they finally stopped, the ground stilling in the wake of their destructive blasts. Elyssa let out a breath, then began pushing herself to the surface, angling outward so that she wouldn’t come up in the middle of a blaze.
Upon reached the surface, she was greeted by utter pandemonium. The gorge was all but gone, engulfed in a roiling conflagration of green fire. Choking smoke wafted up into the air and even as she watched, people came running from the flames, their bodies horribly burned. It wasn’t just the heat that had done it, though. The flames themselves seemed to be acidic, burning away at their skin at over twice the rate of a normal fire.
She stood there, momentarily dumbstruck before her brain kicked into gear, and she began shouting orders. There were still many alive, many who could help to try and quell these flames. Elyssa didn’t want to think about those who’d been trapped in the gorge or think about Gilderon, the man who’d been her guardian since the day she’d been born.
There hadn’t been time to save him. There hadn’t been time to save anyone.
“Back! Get back!” she yelled, reaching for her ability and beginning to rip the ground apart.
The smoke was beginning to blow over to her, and she could only imagine what it would do if it contained the same level of acidity as the fires. Liquid Stone writhed up from the ground, turning into a massive wave and washing over the fires. She had no idea who she was burying under all this earth, but right now, she just needed to put out the flames.
Several Mages came to her side, lending in the aid of quelling the flames. Water and earth were the main ones, though a few fire Mages came as well, setting blazes to either side of the detonation site, burning away at what little foliage remained to contain the spread.
People kept running about, screaming and coughing. She could sense the healers going to work, dragging the injured away from the raging fires, not that they would be able to do anything for the dead. Elyssa ground her teeth together, fighting back the anger, guilt, fear, and loss as she worked alongside the Mages to put out the fires.
It took nearly ten minutes until the last of the green flames were smothered. Wind Mages came in next, using the skills to clear the smog. What Elyssa saw when the smoke drifted away, though, was a scene from her worst nightmares.
The gorge was gone. All that remained was a blasted and burned crater nearly five-hundred yards across.
How many countless bodies had been burned in the fires? How many had been struggling to escape, only to be buried in the stone? Elyssa ground her teeth together, turning back to assess their situation.
“Gather everyone left in command and send them here,” she told the group of Mages. “After that, I want you to start scouring the area. See if anyone might still be alive.”
The Mages ran off to do her bidding, and Elyssa sat down right where she was. Her entire body was shaking, but she couldn’t allow herself to break down. Not here. Not in front of the soldiers who would be counting on her strength. Now was not the time to weep. Now was the time to be strong.
It took nearly twenty minutes to gather the remaining commanders and nation leaders. Ragnar and Malachi were still alive, as neither of them had been in the gorge when it had been blown up. But her command structure was all but destroyed. Only seven of her commanders were left, and two of them looked to have been injured in the explosion.
All of them looked grim, their mouths set in hard lines.
“Do we have an estimated casualty report?” Elyssa asked, her voice somber.
“Nearly half,” Malachi said, his teeth grinding together in rage.
Half. Elyssa fought down the urge to vomit. Half their forces had been wiped out while she’d been hiding underground.
“Injuries?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.
“Not many injured,” Ragnar replied. “Pretty much everyone caught in the blast was either killed instantly or died soon after. The healers are looking after some, but they don’t think many will make it.”
Elyssa looked between her gathered commanders, then back to the blasted ruins of the gorge.
“I should have seen this coming…”
“You did,” Ragnar said, cutting her off. “And you did everything you could to assure—”
“I used us as bait!” Elyssa snapped. “Sent tens of thousands to their deaths! Because of my arrogance in believing that we could turn the tables on them, I killed nearly half our force!”
Silence greeted her words as she breathed hard. She didn’t know why, but she was having a hard time catching her breath. She was feeling lightheaded, as though she couldn’t get enough air.
“You couldn’t have known,” Ragnar said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You thought the enemy was going to try planting those mana bombs we were told about. How were we to know that they would send living people in to blow themselves up?”
Elyssa brushed him off, straightening to her full height and fighting down the feelings of self-pity.
“What do we know about the attack? Do we have any details? How many explosions went off? Are there more of these cultists coming?”
“We believe that there were twenty-four in total,” one of her remaining commanders said. “Of the twenty-four, the estimated number who did any actual damage was only about half, due to the opening of our own portals scrolls and the stone walls that rose just before the explosions went off.”
“How do you know this?” Elyssa asked.
“I was as close to the explosion as could be,” the man said, pointing to the bloodied bandage on his arm and the burned clothes that had yet to be changed. “I saw everything. You may believe that you did nothing to help, but I believe that had you not acted the way you did, the devastation would have been far greater.”
“Listen to the man. He knows what he’s talking about.”
Everyone turned to see Morgan, sitting in a stone chair, floating over to them.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ragnar asked as the stone chair floated down to the ground.
“The same thing that happened here,” Morgan replied.
Elyssa found it hard to look at him. His face was covered in burns, his hair blackened and missing in several areas. A sheet was draped over his body, but she could clearly see red stains and wet patches all over, and the smell was horrific.
“I know, I’ve looked better,” Morgan replied, not at all offended by how most recoiled at the sight of him. “I was lucky to survive. You only had twenty-four show up here, but by my count, nearly fifty attacked the city we were assaulting. I actually still don’t know the status of the attack, so if you would please contact Katherine, I would appreciate it.”
Elyssa started as Morgan looked at her, then quickly fumbled the pendant from inside her armor. She flicked the switch and waited until finally, Katherine’s voice sounded through.
“Elyssa? Is everything alright?”
“Not really,” she replied bitterly. “How are things on your end?”
“The explosions stopped,” Katherine said. “We’re working on stopping the fires and evacuating those who are still alive to the center of the city. The trolls have surrendered. They didn’t much like that the gnomes tried to kill so many of their civilians. We’ll wait for you to finalize everything, but it’s going to take at least a few hours.”
“The same for us, I’m afraid,” Elyssa replied. “The same cultists attacked our forces as well. We lost nearly half our army.”
There was a long silence on the other end, then Katherine finally replied.
“I’d just be grateful we didn’t all die. The gnomes pulled a really nasty surprise attack with this one. Who knew they had such power behind them all along? Makes you wonder why they haven’t used them before…Anyway, I have to go. But I’ll send a communication in the next few hours. Also, please tell Morgan to come back as soon as he is able. We could use his help in putting out the fires.”
Elyssa tucked the pendant away before turning to the gathered crowd. She repeated what Katherine had told her, and although the trolls’ surrender was a good thing, the fact that it had come at such a heavy cost meant that their chances of success had just gone way down.
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“I can’t believe the gnomes had such a powerful weapon,” Ragnar said, repeating Katherine’s earlier sentiment. “How are we supposed to defeat them if they can drop something like that on us at any time?”
It was now two hours later, and after Elyssa had addressed their forces, giving a speech about the strength of the alliance and the vengeance they would rain upon the gnomes, they’d reconvened, this time, inside a shelter, away from prying ears.
There would be no more marching today. They needed to recover and regroup. There would be a mass ceremony tonight to honor the dead. Everyone had lost someone today, and although death was expected in war, death on this scale was something new.
“I don’t think they can,” Morgan said.
He had just returned from putting out the last fires in the city and getting a count of the survivors. Although a massive portion of the outer city had been destroyed, virtually none of the inner sections had been touched. There were an estimated fifty-thousand dead, but despite that, the city would have been completely destroyed if not for his intervention.
“I agree with Morgan,” Elyssa said, interlacing her fingers. “If the enemy had had such a powerful weapon and could have used it at any time, they would have already. I have a feeling that they either used them all or nearly all in this attack. If they have any of those cultists left at all, I’d be shocked.”
She left what everyone else was thinking unsaid. Their forces had been devastated. Where they had once had an army larger than the gnomes’, their forces were now only about three-quarters their size.
Even with the surrender of the trolls, estimates put nearly forty percent of their forces inside the Arcane Kingdom, and they would likely be fed a far different story about the destruction in their capital. The allied forces would take all the blame, meaning the trolls in the Arcane Kingdom would fight even harder.
“How many trolls do you think we can get to fight for us?” Malachi asked.
He had lost yet another of his wives in that explosion, leaving him with only one now. This war had been hard on everyone, but he had possibly endured more loss than anyone here.
“Five thousand, maybe a few more,” Elyssa said. “I’ll be meeting with the troll leaders in a couple of hours to discuss terms.”
That wouldn’t be nearly enough, but they had to work with what they could get.
“That aside,” Ragnar said, “we need to strike back. We need to send a message.”
“And how would you propose we do that?” Elyssa asked.
“By sending Morgan into one of their cities,” Ragnar replied.
Everyone turned to Morgan at that, who shook his head.
“I can’t. They have Grace, and we don’t know where they’re keeping her.”
“But we do know the most likely places where they won’t be keeping her,” Elyssa said, getting quickly to her feet and striding over to the map.
“As far as we can tell, the enemy has barracks here, here, here, and here,” she said, pointing to four sections on the map. “Additionally, we can guess that they will have supply routes in these areas,” she continued, tracing several lines with her finger. “Can we safely assume that Grace won’t be kept in any of these areas?”
Morgan thought it over for a few moments before slowly nodding. There was a slim chance, but the likelihood of keeping her somewhere that open or important wasn’t high.
“Good,” Elyssa said, her lips twisting into a feral grin. “Then I say we hit these bastards where it hurts. They won’t be expecting an attack now, especially after landing such a devastating blow. I want to give our men at least some good news at the mass funeral tonight. Do you think you can handle it on your own?”
Morgan stared down at the map, memorizing the locations.
“I can destroy them,” Morgan said. “Is there anything you’d like me to leave behind?”
