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  “They’re losing,” Megyn whispered softly, looking down at the battlefield, and at first Solomon didn’t quite understand her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at the war zone down there. At how many dead Amazons there are… how many dead Sharak-Ku. The Amazons were vastly outnumbered, we knew that already, and there are a large number more of them dead on the ground down there.”

  Solomon’s eyes scanned the brutality and quickly surmised that Megyn’s quick judgement was accurate. Frighteningly so. For all of the Amazons’ preparations, all of their training, all of their practice, they’d raced headlong into war and already over half of them had been slaughtered.

  There was a quiet crackling of energy from the north and Ella turned to see Locratia leading the team of magic users, pointing them toward the approaching snakemen, arcing lightning exploding from finger tips, coiling through the air and driving hard into the Sharak-Ku attackers. Another young magic user angled around her to the right, tossing a narrow, red fireball, blasting it into a Sharak-Ku shield, but it glanced from the smooth surface and the warrior lunged forward, throwing a spear. As Ella watched in horror, the spear rammed hard into the young mage’s chest, punching clear through and sending her slumping sideways to the ground.

  “We can’t just stand here,” she whispered. “We have to go help. We have to!”

  “The three of us?” Solomon asked, staring down at the carnage below. “What can the three of us do against— that?”

  Three Amazons blasted from the trees on horseback, riding low and tucked tight, hooves slamming on the ground as they rode towards a small group of enemy snakemen. One of the Sharak-Ku spun toward them, pulling a massive war hammer from a sling on his back and charged, swinging it like a cudgel. The hammer’s blunt end drove hard into the body of the lead horse, knocking it aside, sending the Amazon sprawling, a second snake warrior moving in and ramming a sword into the fallen soldier’s back. The Sharak-Ku with the hammer surged right, shoulder checking a second horse and sending that one careening off target as well, then plowed the sharpened end of the war hammer up and around, neatly snapping the neck of a third horse, sending it rearing back and tossing the rider hard from the saddle.

  A single Sharak-Ku warrior had just faced down a trio of horse-riding Amazons— and had beaten them.

  “We have to try,” Solomon said as a violent twisting arc of crimson magic streaked through the air and blistered a pack of gathered Amazons, sending them scattering.

  “One step ahead of you,” Megyn said solemnly from astride her white wolf. “Tyson… GO!” She thumped him with both heels and he took off running, claws clicking on rock, paws pumping, shifting into a silvery streak of speed down the sloping rock. Megyn lifted her bow and began launching volleys of arrows at scattered Sharak-Ku, dropping two of them before she even reached the ground below.

  “What are we waiting for?” Solomon asked, then threw himself down the slope as well, running at full tilt. He could hear Ella coming down beside him and he could see green Acid Arrows hurtling through the air, streaking a pale green reflection against the ground beneath.

  They’d already lost track of Megyn, who had plunged into the thick of battle, Tyson leaping over a group of serpent soldiers just to land on a trio of others, jaws snapping and tearing. She knelt on his back whirling and firing, dropping another Sharak-Ku with a shot to the forehead.

  Solomon was losing track of how much HP each individual enemy was losing, the arrows and blades and magic spells coming fast and furious from all directions. Summoning Axe Throw, he hurled his platinum weapon forward, burying it in the skull of an inattentive Sharak-Ku, then jumped on its back, shoving it face first into the stone, using it as leverage to leap up into the air, activating Long Jump. Clearing another group of enemies, the axe whipped back and landed in his palm as he hit the ground in a clumsy, painful stumble. Sharak-Ku were all around him, closing in. Swinging his axe like a wild man, he sent the blade hacking through one warrior, then planted his foot and whipped it back, driving it hard across the throat of a second. Hit points scattered away with each strike, though not many and not enough.

  Ella landed near him, firing Acid Arrow after Acid Arrow, then Ice Dagger after Ice Dagger, each one weaker than the previous, sacrificing power for speed, trying to whittle down the massive resistance of Sharak-Ku soldiers.

  “I’m starting to wonder if this was a mistake!” Solomon shouted, dodging a sword swing, then lurching forward, slamming his axe blade into another enemy, another enemy that he chopped some HP off of, but did not kill. “We’re too weak!” he exclaimed. “Our levels are too low! This will never work. What were we thinking?”

  “We were thinking it’s better to try and fail than to never try at all!” Ella replied, thrusting her staff forward and ramming it hard into the gut of an approaching enemy, then swinging it around in a tight arc, crashing it against the same Sharak-Ku’s skull.

  “Ella! Solomon!” Locratia screamed, her voice almost sounding happy as she landed in the grass near them, ducking behind a rock for cover before swinging around and unleashing a torrent of hot lightning. The bolt wrapped around a snake man and crackled, sending him gyrating wildly until he slumped to the ground, skin smoking.

  “I am pleased to see you still living!” she said, then slapped her palms together, shooting out another blast of power. “Dare I ask about Queen Soracia?”

  Solomon swung around and threw his axe, burying the sharpened end into a Sharak-Ku’s chest, then called it back to his palm as if he’d been doing it his entire life. Catching it again he barely turned in time to block another blow, though the impact still drove him to his knees. Locratia spun toward him and launched an Ice Dagger, slamming the sharpened end into the enemy’s face.

  “She didn’t make it,” Solomon shouted, trying to sound sympathetic, but also wanting to make sure his voice was clear.

  Locratia’s face began to twist into an expression that he couldn’t quite translate, but she caught herself and corrected it, deciding instead to funnel her emotion through a roiling ball of hot fire.

  Ella jumped into the air and shot a powerful Ice Dagger down at an angle, punching it into a snake soldier’s skull, sending him stumbling backwards. She landed in a crouch, suddenly engulfed by a strange, pale, magical light.

  “What’s wrong?” Solomon demanded, whirling on her.

  “Nothing!” she replied with a smile. “Level six!”

  “Hell yeah!” he cheered. “We’ll have to celebrate! You know, if we live through this.”

  “We’ve got reason to now!” she said with a smile and funneled power into her staff, throwing it forward, turning it into a streak of pure magical power which carved a trench through a group of Sharak-Ku, sending them sprawling.

  Solomon adjusted the grip on his axe as more snakes closed around them, and he looked long and hard at the amplification crystal embedded in the pummel of his axe.

  “Stand back!” he shouted, consuming the extraneous sound from around him, blanketing them all in a strange silence, then burying all of that power, intertwined with his MP, into the luminescent crystal in the axe. He drew in a hard breath, focused his energy, and swung the axe hard, releasing the Sonic Shockwave all at once. An invisible tidal wave of pure power arced free from the slash of the weapon, carving a ragged path through the tightly clutched group of enemy snakemen, throwing them in all directions.

  Thanks to the Javelin of Light and the Sonic Shockwave there was a temporary reprieve, a moment of silence as the area around them cleared. Solomon’s eyes focused, looking through the parted figures. He saw her. The clan leader. Fralesh. She stood among a pile of Amazon corpses, swinging her serpent-carved sword and dagger in a spiraling laser show of glistening steel. An arrow streaked toward her back, and she whirled on it, hacking it out of the air with a swing of her sword. An Amazon warrior charged from her blind side, but she lashed out with the dagger, driving the blade hard into the woman’s chest, throwi
ng her off her feet and down to the ground.

  “She’s mine!” hissed Solomon, thinking back to the vision of her callously slashing Soracia’s throat. He took off at a run, charging toward her, the axe feeling balanced and ready in his hand. She glanced in his direction and smiled thinly as he charged.

  “You escaped the Naga?” she asked, appearing shocked.

  “We killed that sombitch!” Solomon shouted, leaping at her.

  For a brief moment, Fralesh’s face contorted into a look of confused rage, but it corrected almost instantly as she brought her sword around, knocking aside his axe strike. The counter threw him off balance into a stumbling gait and she moved in behind him, stabbing with the ancient dagger. The blade bit hard and deep into his left side and he could feel his HP sprint away, driving him down to one knee. She lifted her sword to strike again, when an arrow charged through the air and drove hard into her chest, sending her back. Megyn appeared, riding on Tyson’s back, her bow in her hand, already loading a second arrow.

  “I will skewer you and eat your pet’s eyes for supper!” screamed Fralesh, slamming her knife in her sheath and clasping her hand around the arrow to remove it. Megyn had already loaded and fired again, putting the second arrow through her leg just above her ankle and into the ground just at her feet, trapping her there.

  “No!” she growled, glaring at the charging wolf, and Megyn leaped up into a crouch on the back of the beast, then jumped forward, pulling out her sword.

  “She’s too strong, Megyn!” Solomon shouted as she swung her blade, the clan leader neatly parrying it with her own counter strike.

  “Maybe for you!” Megyn teased with a smile, but it became quickly clear that yes, the Sharak-Ku clan leader was indeed too strong for both of them.

  In fact, it became all too clear that the Sharak-Ku army was too strong for all of them. Amazons fell by the two’s and three’s as Sharak-Ku whethered powerful blows, but kept on coming. With each passing moment, the Amazon’s ranks dwindled, but the enemy ranks seemed to remain stable, and it was all leading to an unpleasant result. Solomon tried to push that thought out of his mind, there was nothing he could do about it now, and he wasn’t about to let Megyn get run through by this snake woman who had just killed Soracia moments ago.

  He charged toward her, pulling out his axe, snarling and beginning to focus his energy. Praklegh was in his blind spot, and he didn’t even see her until she unleashed a massive burst of raw magical power, which slammed hard into his blind side, picking him up and throwing him several meters, his skin boiling, his body trashing in pure agony, his hit points screaming down toward zero. He struck the ground hard, his shoulders hitting first, a roiling churn of smoke and steam crawling from his body. As he lay in the smoldering grass, he looked over through pain streaked eyes and saw the Sharak-Ku sorceress gliding noiselessly over the ground, robe flapping, moving in his direction, malice and death gleaming in her eyes.

  Chapter 39 - One Foot in the Grave

  * * *

  He held a hand over his face, shielding his eyes from the crackling crimson of magical lightning as it radiated from the Sharak-Ku sorceress. She hovered just above the ground, the lightning snapping underneath her feet, slashing and snapping at the dirt and grass. She was encircled in a ball of it, the low popping of raw power arcing from her fingers, her arms outstretched wide.

  “This will be the end of you, young one,” she hissed, her reptilian voice hissing like the scraping of coarse sandpaper. “You were defiant, I will give you that, for all the good it did you.”

  The hair was standing up on Solomon’s arm, a light tingle of static electricity as the sorceress drew closer, and he struggled to glare through the fog of his dwindling health. His hit point lingered closer to empty than full, a dull, flashing red taking up nearly his entire screen.

  Warning! HP at Critical Levels

  -2 to STR

  -2 to AGI

  -1 to DEX

  Oh, of course, Solomon thought quietly to himself. Great. Not only are my hit points next to nothing, but they’re low enough to get pummeled by some extra debuffs just as this crazy sorceress who apparently is powerful enough to have taught the last super powerful magic user we faced is ready to zap my ass with some red lightning. Great timing, Shyft, as always.

  “Any final words, young one?” Praklegh asked, gliding over to him, her feet slightly above the crackling and wavering grass, flattening in a spherical shape to match the underside of the globe of magical energy keeping her aloft.

  “Yeah, I’ve got two final words for you,” Solomon started, “Suck i—”

  Another war horn blew. It blew loud, and long, and quite suddenly, its bellowing, triumphant call loud enough to disrupt the entire field of battle, bringing each smaller conflict to a haltering stop, heads turning and eyes glaring.

  A small figure came into view, not walking, necessarily, but— hopping. It was a light gray figure wearing cobalt armor, his long ears flopping with each loping leap as he approached the elevated ridge of the northern forest, the trees ending at the top of another gradual slope down to the rocky base of the Devil’s Mouth.

  Solomon smiled softly at the sight of him. As he finished his final hop forward, the figure stood, squat, but proud, holding a sword in his right paw, a scalp-shaped helmet pulled tight, with room for his long ears to emerge from through two carved out sections of metal.

  Woodland Roundtail stood there, chest thrust out, brave and stoic, facing down the Sharak-Ku horde.

  The horn sounded again, and all at once a long, thick row of figures appeared to his right, more hopping, more flopping ears, more armored figures, short but brave, weapons held and ready. It blew a third time. To Woody’s left more figures appeared, far larger and broader shouldered than the others, not covered in gray fur, but instead covered in a thick, brownish hide. They had narrow heads with elongated snouts, and even slightly hunched over they were a good meter taller than the Harefolk next to them.

  It was an entire horde of Troglodytes. Those rough, angry, ancient lizards that roamed the Greenmurk Swamps. At the center of the group, Solomon recognized Threng, the Troglodyte that Ella had rescued from being dragged into the mud out in the swamps, his thick, scale covered hide adorned in layered Ankheg armor, a battle axe held in the clenched three fingers of his right hand. Several of his fellow lizard men fanned out behind him, more than Solomon could count from his angle.

  The war horn sounded yet again, and dozens of twinkling yellow lights burst into view whipping up above the row of Harefolk and Troglodytes, a buzzing, hovering army of fae folk. Something told him Gossamer was among the crowd there, gathered together and ready to strike.

  There was one final blast of sound from the horn, not a gathering blast like had been heard three times already, but an aggressive, punishing blast. A single deafening, angry bleat, screaming high and loud and signaling the army to attack.

  Woody lifted his sword and shouted, leading the reinforcements down the slope, charging and screaming the whole way. His voice cut through the air like a war horn itself, his normally tame, squeaky voice amplified by an echoing boom of bravado. Immediately, the Sharak-Ku met his yell with screams of their own, warriors far and wide calling out their retaliatory bellows, hurling themselves over rocks and stone, charging over the uneven ground, lifting swords, throwing spears, charging to meet the oncoming wave. Both sides crashed together like a violent ocean wave slamming hard against the rocky edge of land, and like the malleable waters of the sea, the Harefolk scattered, jumping, lunging, cartwheeling and spiraling out of the way of the surging Sharak-Ku horde. Leaping left and right, darting under swings and vaulting over lunging attacks, the smaller, more nimble warriors served up a suitable distraction, the Sharak-Ku attackers swiveling left and right, swinging desperately as the creatures sprang away.

  The Troglodytes came next, the hard-skinned, thick bodied warriors, barreling down the slope, screeching their reptilian battle cries, driving deep into the heart of
the charging snakemen, pounding them with the full force and brutality of Thresh’s swamp born race. Claws raked, heads bowed and shoulders rammed, forcing back the approaching warriors, sending them on their heels as blades were slipped free, clashing against other blades or hacking through the slick, smooth skin of the snakes. As the two reptile races slammed headlong among the rocky outcroppings at the base of the caverns, luminescent streaks of magical light cut through the air like miniature comets, screaming just above their heads, whirling left and right, blasting out pale blue bolts of pure energy at every turn. These magical blasts weren’t killing the snakes, not by a long shot, but they were creating a further distraction, causing them pause, a brief moment’s hesitation as Troglodyte warriors cut through them with rusted swords, old worn battle axes, and scavenged spears.

  Solomon’s eyes were wide through the haze of near death as he watched the display, and Praklegh watched it, too, turning to witness the carnage approaching swiftly from the north. She whirled on him, her face twisting into a snarl.

  “No matter what happens here tonight,” she hissed, “it will be far too late to save you!” She lifted her hands, gathering a rippling coil of crimson electricity between her tensed fingers. Solomon braced himself for it, knowing it was inevitable, that jolting, snapping pain, the world swirling out from under him as he was catapulted back to respawn. He only hoped that the rest of them could finish the job that he could not. Once again his eyes were far larger than his level six mouth.