When the mist finally swept past, everyone was still inside the stronghold. Only, the ground beneath their feet was no longer Lar Fortress.
The walls stood taller, the crenels sat closer together, and several high towers rose within the city, their banners bearing heraldry in a human noble style that no one recognized.
Thankfully, no one had been separated.
The commander was about to take a head count and organize scouts when a burst of orderly footsteps came from around a corner.
A column of soldiers filed out, their armor nothing like his men's.
Thicker breastplates, high-set pauldrons, dark red plumes on their helmets.
The man at their head had the look of a general, an old scar slanting across the left side of his face from brow to the corner of his mouth.
He walked straight up to the commander. No pleasantries, no introduction. He simply issued orders as a superior would: "Those things have grown into a real force. This is the only place left we can hold! The south and west walls are yours. If you fail... I hope you'll already be dead on the wall. Otherwise, even if the bugs don't eat you, I'll send you to the headsman myself afterward."
"What bugs..." The commander's question never made it out. The alarm bell on the wall began to toll.
Atop a high tower, a mage leaned halfway out and pointed his staff to the east. A colored orb of light detached from its tip and flew toward the open plain.
The orb burst in midair. The light in the distance bent and warped, and the silhouettes of arthropod monsters surfaced across the previously empty plain!
Someone recognized them on the spot: "Qisi?!"
The colored orb covered a wide area, yet it exposed only part of the swarm. Their true numbers were anyone's guess.
The commander's scalp prickled. He spun and roared at the soldiers still standing dazed behind him: "To the walls! Move!"
Vera's three were no exception, charging up with the crowd.
Fayin climbed a tower and joined the other mages in hurling the concealment-breaking orbs. They burst one after another outside the city, lighting up the invisible swarm until it had nowhere left to hide.
Carapace pressed against dense carapace, paving the earth from the foot of the wall to the end of sight!
Some six-clawed bugs had already started up the wall, sharp forelimbs wedging into the seams of the stone, shooting up several meters with every few pulls. Fayling's arrow punched clean through the skull of the nearest one. Purple blood sprayed, and the corpse dropped away to smash into the bug-pile below.
But more bugs climbed on over their companions' carcasses, and in an instant the fight burned white-hot.
Fortunately, this city's defenses, though short of Lar Fortress's, still made for a solid stronghold. At the least, Vera and the others didn't have to worry about the bugs digging through the walls in a few strokes.
The bugs threw themselves at the west wall wave upon wave. Once the command shifted most of the troops over, and with the Puchis' help, the defenders could just barely keep them suppressed.
Vera crouched behind a crenel and sent an explosive crossbow bolt straight down. Fire bloomed in the swarm, several bugs ripped apart, purple blood splattering wide.
He had just drawn a second bolt when the soldier next to him let out a sudden cry: "This is bad!"
Vera glanced over. The man's face had gone bone white.
"What is it?"
"Something's wrong. I've fought these things at sea. Since when do they all charge one point like brainless drones?" The soldier stared down at the churning bug-tide, a vein jumping at his temple. "It's a feint! Strike east, hit west!"
Before the words had fully landed he was already sprinting for the command post.
The commander of Lar Fortress had never crossed blades with Qisi, but he gave this "experienced" warning his full weight.
He not only pulled some soldiers off the west wall to reinforce the south, he sent men to watch the walls on every other side, with orders to report the slightest movement at once.
Except that this doubled the pressure on the south wall. Bugs made it over the parapet several times, and Vera's saber finally tasted blood.
The embarrassing part was that the bugs in this mist illusion truly were single-minded.
From beginning to end they hammered at one direction and one direction only. No flanking, no ambushes, nothing that even deserved the word tactics.
All of Vera's group's precautions bought them nothing but extra casualties of their own.
Still, if the bugs had no clever tricks, their raw strength was another matter entirely.
A colossal silhouette rose over the horizon outside the city!
Tentacles studded with teeth, each as thick as a century-old tree trunk. Carapace as thick as a city wall.
It squeezed its way out from behind the swarm, and every movement it made set the wall faintly trembling.
A giant tentacle-toothed beast!
The monster's tentacle slammed down on the wall. The soldiers on that stretch screamed once and were crushed into bloody froth.
Vera's saber bit deep, purple blood gushing, but it did nothing at all to slow a monster of that size.
Worse, a second tentacle swept across and smashed square into the nearest casting tower.
The tower cracked and tilted. Fayin was still on it, and she knew no wind-element flight magic.
Vera sprinted for the toppling tower, screaming himself hoarse: "Fayin, jump!"
Fayin leapt in a panic, but a chunk of falling masonry from the tower's peak clipped her, and she didn't clear much distance.
Even with Vera's flying leap, a gap remained between them.
At the last hair's breadth, an arrow flashed in from the side, pierced Fayin's robe, and dragged her that tiny bit closer toward Vera.
"I've got you!" Vera crushed Fayin into his arms, twisted in the air, and dropped toward the ground below.
The tower came down with a roar. Dust boiled up and filled the sky.
On the wall, Fayling, who had loosed that arrow, watched with her heart in her throat until Vera leapt clear of the rubble with Fayin in his arms. Only then did she finally breathe again.
The battle, however, was not over.
The giant tentacle-toothed beast shrugged off the army's fire and tore a breach clean through the wall. The bugs poured in, shrilling...
No one knew how much time had passed when the mist ebbed at last, releasing the Lar Fortress it had swallowed.
The fortress stood exactly as before. The soldiers inside were fewer by more than half, and the Puchis had been all but completely spent.
In the end they had found the eye-bug controlling it all amid the bug-tide, and Fayling's arrow had killed it, but by then the casualties were already appalling.
Those who died inside the mist left not even bodies behind.
Even the survivors nearly all carried wounds, light or heavy.
Thankfully, with the mycelium at hand, even the gravely wounded would live.
Vera found Fayling and Fayin; the fighting had forced them apart near the end.
Seeing them both alive, he let out a long, heavy breath.
Fayling had collected a few new wounds, but she could still stand, could even wave her one remaining arrow at Vera and grin through the pain: "I did bring down that last eye-bug, you know. I'd say they owe me a noble title for it."
"Vera..." Fayin held up her staff, on the verge of tears.
She was unhurt, but the staff was down to half its length. The crystal-set head had vanished entirely, and deep tooth-marks scored the break.
Vera walked over and gathered them both into his arms, holding tight, as if afraid something might scatter them again. "I'll pick you a better staff when we're home. Thank the heavens you're both all right."
"Vera!"
Fayin hugged him back.
Fayling froze, shy for a heartbeat, then wrapped her arms around him too.
Under the setting sun, three survivors held each other close, and a soldier nearby who saw it couldn't help laughing and cursing Vera's luck.
No one noticed the streak of vivid scarlet racing in from the direction the mist had retreated.
Blood Manipulation: Ten Thousand Arrows.
The mass of scarlet burst apart in midair, becoming a hundred slender arrows of blood.
Fayling shoved Vera and Fayin away with all her strength, and under their uncomprehending eyes, one blood arrow sank into the center of her brow.
She folded sideways to the ground, soft as a dry leaf let go by the autumn wind, raising a small puff of dust.
"Enemy attack!"
"Blood Manipulation! Imperial vampires!"
"Activate the fortress defenses, now!"
"We can't! The Mist destroyed too many of the runes!"
"Damn it! Why? Why would the Empire show up now? The Mist only just..."
The fortress dissolved into chaos, footsteps and shouting and the dull thud of crossbow fire pressing in from every direction.
But Vera heard none of it.
He knelt on the ground, hands hovering over Fayling's body, not knowing where he was allowed to touch.
Outside the city, astride his war beast, Duke Levi swept away the last unfaded shreds of mist with a wave of his hand. His scarlet cloak hung dead still, and behind him massed the black tide of the Empire's army.
He raised his hand and pointed at Lar Fortress.
"Attack."
(End of Chapter)
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