Chương 165: Chapter 164 [So It Begins]

The horde hit the outer trench before most of them even seemed to notice it was there. The ones at the front tried to stop, feet skidding in the churned earth, but there was nothing behind them slowing down to let them. The press from further back shoved through regardless, bodies tipping forward into the gap, some scrabbling at the far edge and failing to catch it, others simply gone.

From the platform, the first arrows started to fall, height turning the trench itself into a killing floor before the fight had properly started. Leo watched it happen with grim satisfaction at a plan already working as intended. He looked to each of the gaps left open in the treeline and watched the same thing play out. He knew this wouldn't last, but anything that could deplete their numbers before they made it to the defensive line was a good thing.

"Not long now," Kai said beside him.

"No." The trench was never meant to stop them. It was made to slow them, thin them, and buy the archers a few extra seconds of easy targets before the real weight of it reached the cars. He watched as the first of them made their way over the trench, jumping across the gap, some of them slipping backwards into the chasm on the slick ground. Those who made it across began moving towards the other defences.

Parmo already had three down by the time the mass of monsters started jumping the gap, arrows loosing constantly, one after another into the press of bodies still pouring through the treeline.

"I'm on three already," he called over. One of the archers a few feet along laughed.

"Really, dude? A Gimli reference?"

"Man, if you can't have fun when you're in a life and death situation, it's going to fuck your head. So why not?" Rika's wings flared as she loosed her own.

"I'm on five."

"You're supposed to say seventeen," the archer called back, grinning. One of the other archers a few feet along groaned.

"How's that fair? We can't reach half of what you two are hitting from here."

"Skill issue," Parmo said, and grinned when the archer flipped him off. Down the line, kobolds kept coming in twos and threes, tucked in behind the bigger bodies, bows already strung. Every one of them went down fast, Rika or Parmo or one of the platform archers finding them before they got a shot off. Anything that could shoot back got priority. Everyone knew that without needing to be told twice.

The ones that made it past the trench hit the boggy ground and slowed almost immediately. Goblins bunched up fast once their feet started sinking, shoving at each other to keep moving, snapping and snarling at whatever was in front of them. A few went down outright, boots stuck fast, dragged under by their own momentum. The shadowclaws picked their way through easier, lighter on their feet, faster to adjust, but even they were slowing compared to the open ground further east. Good enough. Let's make it worse.

Sam cast the fog low and wide across the whole stretch of bog, shaping it the way he'd practised a hundred times now. It rolled out fast, swallowing the goblins mid-stride, a solid black wall that swallowed his own view of them too for a moment before he marked everyone behind him as an ally. The fog thinned to nothing in front of his eyes, giving them all clear vision of what was going on inside. He knew the monsters on the other side of the fog wall would be confused.

The black veil still blocked all sight and sound from outside for anyone he hadn't marked, so they would have no idea what it was or what was happening within. Those inside visibly froze, the loss of their senses too much to keep them pushing forward in the squelching bog. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Behind him, someone sucked in a breath.

"I heard about when he did this last time," a voice said, low.

"When the goblins and kobolds hit us. Never seen it myself, though."

"I have," another said.

"But when we were training. They practice near the field sometimes. It's amazing, right?" Sam didn't answer. He was watching the goblins as they started slamming into each other in the dark.

"Ready!" Phil called. The wind mage nodded, already lifting the sack off the ground and out into the air before guiding it above the trench and holding it there. The bag drifted slightly against a wind that wasn't natural. Up on the platform, one of the archers had it lined up already, someone who'd clearly been made aware of the trick and was waiting to play their part.

"Shoot!" The arrow found the sack clean, flour bursting out and scattering wide across the air above the packed line of monsters still shoving through the gap in the treeline, carried further than it had any right to by the wind mage's magic holding the cloud together. Phil didn't need to be precise. He just needed to be close. He launched a fireball and watched as it landed somewhere inside the drifting cloud.

The whole thing went up at once, a boom that rolled out across the field and rattled through Phil's own chest before he'd even processed what he was seeing. Fire tore through the trench in an instant, and when it cleared, a hole in the throng of enemies remained, limbs and gore revealing the deadly aftermath before more monsters tentatively filled the gap. The memory of Diane tearing her hair out, mumbling it doesn't make sense when this little idea had worked the day before, came to mind.

He didn't know why he thought it might fail. The car batteries might not be starting and chemical reactions might be failing, but something about using magic just felt like it might work. His idea had been right on the money. Further along the line, goblins that had been pushing forward a second ago had stopped dead, the sound alone enough to shake something loose in whatever passed for their nerve before they continued pushing forward.

"That's one way to start," Phil said, before grinning and calling for another.

Trapped and blind, the goblins found the connecting trench waiting on the other side whether they meant to or not. A few went straight in without a sound, the spikes at the bottom making quick work of them. Others floundered where they stood, thrashing at nothing, clipping each other with wild swings meant for something that wasn't there.

"Good job," Nessa said, watching a shape stumble and vanish from view as it tumbled to its death.

"Thanks," Sam said.

"Costs me next to nothing to keep this up all day if I need to." He didn't mention the fact that if he was forced to use Phantasm, his mana pool would drop fast. He hadn't been given enough time to gain enough mastery of his new spell, so the cost was still high. He watched the chaos unfold in front of him, listened to the muffled noise bleeding through even with the sound cut off for anyone but him, and felt no particular urge to do anything more than that. He didn't need to.

The plan was to hold this part of the battlefield in place for as long as possible. The cleanup could happen after the rest of the field was clear. It should have stayed that simple. He noticed the hobgoblin because it wasn't moving like the rest of them. Everything else in range of the fog had pushed forward and paid for it, but this one had stopped short, well back from the edge, watching.

Sam could feel it as much as see it through the clarity the spell gave him, a presence that wasn't thrashing blind like everything else, moving with intent instead, pushing goblins forward. Expendables, figuring out where the boundary was. Testing the edge. He watched it work out, piece by piece, what he was doing. It couldn't see through the fog any better than anything else caught inside it, but it didn't need to.

It could smell exactly where the humans were standing, and it was using that, sending its own kind out wide to hunt for a way round rather than through, walking them along the boundary like they were feeling for a door. Clever bastard. If this kept up, they'd find a way through even with the lack of sight. He'd wanted to keep this simple. Cheap, sustainable, exactly what he'd promised himself before any of this started. Fine. Let's see how you like this.

Sam pushed the fog further, using more mana than he liked before he reached for the second spell.