Blood Shaper - Book 4: Chapter 49

Four red dragons battled in the sky over Avalon. Blasts of flame from the scintillating ruby dragon blew the blood-red dragons apart. His death-defying movements allowed him to grab the blood champions and tear them to shreds, and the insides of the three blood champions would suddenly swelled up, and they would burst into pieces, raining blood across the landscape. The sheer difference in power seemed to have the battle entirely at the whims of the real dragon and his rider, but that would be if one didn’t factor in that the blood champions wouldn’t stay dead.

Torn limbs would reform over the course of a few moments, and destroyed dragons would simply reassemble before they hit the ground and fly up to rejoin the fight. Even when the champions exploded from within and were completely rent into nothing but droplets, one of the other dragons would fly close to the red mist and the “destroyed” dragon would reform itself after a short wait. The sheer unending nature of the attack against dragon and rider would wear them down, even if they were the unquestionable superior fighters.

“That’s a little bit mean of you,” Eleniah commented as she and Kay both watched the aerial battle unfold. “Hiding Blood Champion copies of yourself in the dragon champions to put them back together during the fight is a devious move.”

“This is a war… isn’t it? It’s definitely a battle; at least, devious moves are the best moves. Murunel asked that we don’t kill them, so wearing them down so we can capture them is better than trying to knock them unconscious or something that might kill them if things go wrong.”

Kay turned to look down at the “battle” below him. The mixed soldiers of the campaign to kill him weren’t working together. Each desperate group was doing its own thing, and it was making the entire “battle” a bit of a mess. Three or four groups had ladders; farther down the line from Kay, there were two clumps of soldiers with ladders, but their uniforms were so similar he couldn’t tell if they were the same group or not, but only one group had ladders tall enough to reach the top of the walls. The other three groups were trying to prop their ladders up against cutouts in the wall for the defenders to shoot out of, but those were even easier to defend against than the ladders at the top. No one was trying to support the people scaling either, so it wasn’t much trouble for Kay’s outnumbered troops to knock them climbers down or surround them when they made it to the top and dog pile them. Without massed projectiles fired at them, the defenders could move as they pleased for the most part.

A few detachments of troops had Earth Mages or Earth Manipulators with them who were trying to rend holes in the walls for people to march right through. They were easily countered by Avalon’s own mages and manipulators who overwhelmed the attacks with higher tier Classes, higher level Skills, or just pure numbers. More than one soldier marched into an opening carved into the bottom of the wall and right into the waiting arms of prepared defenders, the tunnels carved by their allies diverted by Avalon’s soldiers.

The three siege weapons that had been brought weren’t very helpful either. Only one of them had been fully assembled when the battle started so abruptly, and one more had been finished during the fighting. The single trebuchet was chucking large rocks that left cracks, chips, and dents in the walls, but there was only one of them, and the damage was easily fixed by mages in between shots. The other working siege engine was a scorpion-like weapon mounted on a cart that was being rolled into range as Kay watched. It got off one bolt that clipped one of Avalon’s soldiers and sent them reeling. Immediately after that, concentrated fire from several sources, including Lauren, if the massive arrow made out of blood was any indicator, demolished it. Without anyone helping to defend the weapon, it was easily destroyed, and the soldiers manning it were sent running.

“This is… lame?” He muttered, “That might not be the right word, but… they’re doing so bad. The only ones that I’m actually worried about are the Clans over there and the Nelamians. They at least seem organized. The Crusade would be a bit more of a threat if it didn’t look like half of them weren’t even fighting. I don’t see anyone from the Shatterplate Order anywhere, and from Alice’s explanations, I wouldn’t expect them to be that effective in this type of conflict. The rest of them are just… doing whatever they want. And not very well for the most part.”

One of Curcius’ aides had been seconded to Kay for the duration of the battle, and she stepped closer when Kay finished speaking. “Just to let you know, my lord, the Clans appear to be settling in for a protracted siege and seem to be preparing for sapping operations.”

Kay slowly turned to look at her. “The Clans’ soldiers are preparing sapping operations.” He pointed at the clustered group of dwarves mixed in with taller beastkin farther down the wall. “Those people over there? The ones right in the open where we can see them. They’re trying to secretly dig under the walls?”

“Yes, my lord, they are.”

“Is anyone else feeling let down?”

“We’re only at this level of an advantage because we got work early and spent that time preparing.” Eleniah warned him, a bit of a scolding laced into her words, “If we hadn’t had a wall, or if we’d had much smaller walls that weren’t prepared for a siege, things would be a lot different. We wouldn’t have lost immediately, we might not have lost at all thanks to the chokeholds we could have forced them into, which would have neutralized some of their numbers advantage, but our preparations are really what’s doing most of the work here today.”

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“That’s true, and whenever Kolm shows up asking for repayment, we’ll give him whatever he wants. But how do we make this end?” Kay pointed behind the line of battle at the hastily assembled tents the leaders of the campaign had retreated to after the assassination attempt. “That Crusader General of theirs looked like he was going to be reasonable at the beginning, but he hasn’t come back out afterward, so we can’t rely on that. They don’t have enough supplies to siege us out, so we could just combine waiting them out with bleeding them out, but I’m not that interested in killing people for following the orders of idiots. More importantly, my people are getting hurt and dying the longer this goes on. How do we end this quickly?”

“Overwhelming force.” Eleniah shrugged when he looked at her. “The fight ends when one side can’t fight anymore. Sad as it is, the people down there are the enemy. If you want our people to live, you’re going to have to be open to killing the people down there. But the shorter this lasts, the fewer chances there are for each person here to die. So sweep over them like a tide of blood and force them to surrender or drown.” She shot him a grin, “Plus, the soldiers you can send at them to do that are completely expendable. You can afford to lose a few by ordering them to kill as few people as possible.”

“Also, my lord,” Curcius’ aide chimed in, “If you wipe out the likely culprits for the attack on the Crusader General, it will eliminate the people who want there to be a battle. That gives the more reasonable leaders who were willing to parley and avoid a battle the chance to pull their troops back.”

Kay nodded slowly as he thought it over. “Alright. Go get Curcius for me.”

The aide saluted and ran off, returning with Avalon’s general a few minutes later.

“You call, my lord?”

“You’ve got the experience, so I’m running this by you first. Have old Johnny take out the two siege engines with cannon, scare the pants off them. I’ll call up the surprise we left downstairs and start pushing back the line of battle. Cindy and the sharpshooters can pick off anyone trying to rally while we push them back, with emphasis on the Nelamian officers. You and the army, backed up by Meten and the Sentinels, go mobile and start picking off anyone that resists, focused on shoring up defensively so no one breaks through to get behind and start taking down my surprise. I’ll take a portion and hit the Nelamians myself and teach them why they shouldn’t fuck with us.”

Curcius listened impassively and began checking the position of Avalon’s forces and the enemy’s. “That should work just fine, my lord. You’ll have to push that handful back from the gates for us to sortie out of, but they’re almost fighting each other while trying to get through. Too focused on personal glory over actually trying to win, I’d wager.”

“What about me?” Eleniah asked insistently. “What am I doing?”

“Go find that orc you tossed off somewhere. He was dressed like a Crusade officer and seemed too hotheaded to even think about believing me. If we want to end this quick, we should take out the people who want to keep fighting, like she said,” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at the aide, who perked up happily. “If you can capture him so we can turn him over as a peace offering whenever the Crusader General shows up again, that’d be good, but I’ll tell you the same thing I’m going to tell everyone else. Our people and our lives over theirs. A lot of them might be the poor fuckers who marched along to deal with a potential vampyr, or they might be dicks who decided they cared about their own wants more than Avalon’s people and sovereignty, but either way, kill them if you need to. I’ll pray for the dead, but our people are more important to me than attacking enemies.”

Eleniah jumped forward and pulled him into a quick hug. “I’m sorry that I dragged you into this.”

“Please,” Kay rebutted her, “I jumped into this with my eyes wide open. You gave me the option of this, but I made the choice.”

Eleniah smiled sadly at him, then headed to the edge of the wall.

“Hey, wait,” Kay called after her. “Go land near the gates; give our people extra time to get ready. And don’t die.”

“That’s my line.” She sprinted along the crenelations till she was in the general area of the heavy gates that led into the city and flipped off the top, headed at the ground feet first. Kay heard an echoing crack as she impacted, leaving a crumpled crater in the ground at her feet. She moved at tier-five speed, leaving a blur in her wake, and people started flying through the air as she punched her way through the enemy line.

Kay stretched out his neck as he stepped forward. He raised both hands and concentrated, gathering his mana for a very expensive Skill. “[Lord’s Bloody Domain].” His voice, effused with the Voice of the World, spread across the walls as the range of his Skills suddenly skyrocketed. The buried containers of blood hidden beneath the ground seemed to appear to his magical sense as the range grew large enough to detect them, and he grasped them all at once. Geysers of blood burst from the ground, sending enemy soldiers flying and slipping across the ground as red liquid sprayed everywhere. Then Kay invoked the Class Skill of the other tier five Class he’d worked to get over the last few months of the army’s approach, Blood Army General. “[Create Blood Army].”

The pooling blood that flooded the battlefield began to clump together, and shapes started to push up from the swirling pools. Armed and armored soldiers began to rise up, looking like diminished members of the blood guard, armed with halberds. Their weapons and armor lacked the luster of Kay’s or his Blood Guard, but there were thousands of them, and it didn’t matter if they died. Patches of the enemy began to panic as fresh troops created from nowhere started to march on them.