The Forsaken Hero
Chapter 369: Burning Skies

Chapter 369: Burning Skies

The Last Light Company charged forward, slinging arrows, spells, and magical techniques. The Dead Wing Legion was slow to respond, still shocked senseless by the brutal death of one of their powerful monsters. By the time they got their bearings, our allies were upon them.

"To the skies!" Commander Barron cried, leaping atop one of his soldier’s wyverns.

But it was too late. Before the mighty creatures could get airborne, soldiers swarmed over them, hacking and slashing with fury. Many had yet to forgive the enemy commander his vulgar insults toward me and took it out on his men, dragging them from their mounts and ending their screams with cold efficiency.

A wyvern managed to break free of the soldiers and started to fight for altitude, its great wings desperately slapping the air. The ice spirit that had started it all disappeared, only to reappear on the other side of it. The beast’s cries went quiet as its head detached from the long, serpentine neck and its body crashed back to the earth. Orion led a squad of men to its now grounded riders and eliminated them before another wyvern could provide rescue.

Of the ten or so wyverns that had landed, only two made it to the skies. A third had made to join them, but a sudden crack of lightning ripped through the vulnerable skin of its wing, sending it spiraling to the ground. The hole streamed ribbons of crimson blood, the edges of the membrane curling in on themselves as lingering arcs of lightning continued to ravage the wound.

I flinched as it crashed to the ground just a few feet in front of us, instinctively falling back behind Fable. Several soldiers leaped from the writhing monster with their weapons drawn, charging toward us. Each wyvern carried a full party of combatants, with three melee soldiers, a mage, and an archer.

"Capture the filthblood and the rest will fall!" one of their melees said of them shouted.

"Bastards," Luxxa muttered, moving to intercept them. "Have they no honor?"

She hit the advancing soldiers hard, taking a sword on her shield and gutting its wielder with a vicious stab to his stomach. The mage blasted her with a fireball, obscuring her body in a storm of flame. Assuming her dead, the others tried to bypass her and close toward me, but she burst through the sheets of fire and cut down the archer. His scream caused the others to turn, but by that point, the Mirror Sphere had gathered enough of the spell’s mana for a reflection, and the rest of the squad was consumed in the resulting inferno.

"Thanks," I said as she returned to my side.

"It’s my duty to protect you, so you just focus on the shard. We’ll take care of the rest," she answered, favoring me with a smile. The blood splattering her face made it more menacing than comforting, but I appreciated the gesture from the stern woman.

"That’s one thing we can agree on," an alluring, feminine voice said.

We both looked over as the billowing smoke parted and Jenna through. Her long, blonde hair fluttered in the winds she kept wrapped around herself, a spell that kept the smoke at bay and protected her from stray arrows. Orion and Gith followed close behind her, their eyes trained on the sky at the scores of wyverns that circled above.

Luxxa frowned at the flighty mage, disapproval written across her face. "Watch where you’re blasting those monsters. That last one almost landed directly on top of us."

"Well, to be honest, I didn’t expect it to work. What in the world possessed them to ride with the Storm Hero if they’re not even immune to lightning?"

Giggling softly, Jenna danced around Luxxa, gracefully taking my cheek in one of her hands and peering worriedly into my eyes. I blushed slightly as I suddenly found myself intimately close to the beautiful woman, our faces just a breath apart.

"I-I’m fine," I muttered, my tail twitching nervously.

"I guess healing’s one of the few things this armored prick is good for," she said, winking at Luxxa. Despite her jest, she sounded relieved.

"That’s enough bickering," Orion said, still watching the sky closely. "And Jenna, please give Xiviyah some space. You’re embarrassing her."

Jenna winked at me before pulling away. "Fine, fine. What’s the plan?"

"Commander’s put us on guard duty. Gith says there’s close to a hundred wyverns, which means about five hundred soldiers. They just played around and got their nose bloodied, so we’re guessing they’ll start taking this fight seriously."

"Barron managed to get away," Gith added. He suddenly drew his bow and leashed an arrow. I followed the trajectory and winced as it slammed into an airborne archer who had just been aiming at us. The soldier let out a shout and slumped over, dead, but still strapped to the saddle.

"Would have been better if your spirit had killed him," Luxxa muttered. "He’s not known for taking humiliation easily. If his goal wasn’t to crush us before, it certainly is now. I doubt they even remember they’re supposed to be saving strength to challenge that gate."

Orion nodded, then turned to our wind mage. "Jenna, clear this smoke up. I want to see what’s happening."

"Right away."

With a quick chant, she cast a fourth circle spell and conjured a cyclonic wind storm. The banks of smoke dissipated around the shard, leaving us a clear view of both forces. The spell didn’t fade right away, either. As lightning continued to strike the courtyard, the winds quickly erased the resulting clouds of dust, debris, and smoke.

The Death Wings circled our company just within bowshot, taking full advantage of their aerial superiority. The winds of the storm kept all but the most powerful arrows from reaching them, but allowed them to rain spells and arrows up on our head. They seemed confused as the Last Light Company refused to scatter to cover, maintaining their defensive positions around the shard at the cost of receiving every attack thrown at them.

Their confusion turned to horror as they realized the full extent of my magic, as not a single one of their attacks made it past the gold and silver auras shimmering around each soldier. Then, as one, the Mirror Spheres activated, bathing the sky in fire, lightning, and ice. Explosions lit the sky one after the other, blazing fireworks against the black canopy of storm clouds. The wyverns began extreme avoidance maneuvers, dipping, weaving, and diving with extreme speeds, but the relentless barrage of their own making sealed the doom of many. Before the skies finally fell quiet again, more than a dozen plummeted to the earth, trailing blood, smoke, and screaming men.

"This is...cheating," Luxxa muttered, giving me a side-long glance.

My tail drooped a bit, at her words. She was right; it was too easy. Tens of powerful men and women whose only goal was to defend their world from the demons were slaughtered by the second, their only crime following the orders of a commander who refused to let us be. They didn’t have a chance in hell to successfully raid the gate to begin with, not with Luke there, but now? If we crippled this new army, what would happen to their kingdom without their elite troops? How many souls had we damned if this ended up like the double-gate incident all over again?

Orion must have caught sight of my dismay, because he quickly shook his head. "This is the product of their own ignorance, and for daring to look down on our Lady. No soldier in his right mind would attack a hero, yet they have come with reprehensible insults and threats. Now they pay the price for their arrogance."

By this point, the only illumination in the sky was the flickering flashes of lightning. The dark shapes of the wyverns retreated further up, out of range of most spells and arrows. Those who had fallen and survived were easily dispatched by our forces on the ground. The wyverns were powerful, but still only fourth and fifth level. My allies were the elite of the Last Light Company, each soldier individually powerful enough to fight one on their own. Against the support my magic offered and the strength of my ice spirits, the monsters were easily dispatched and the courtyard fell quiet again.

The shard was still under my control, the mana flowing to sustain the gate. I could feel the ninth-level ice spirit in the distance, though anything beyond the general direction was beyond me. Through the Nexus, I was also aware of Korra and could feel the spells and wards on her hold strong. If the Storm Hero truly had decided to fight her at fifth level, it would be impossible for Korra to lose. Even if the opponent was a hero, my spells were at the peak of fifth circle and wouldn’t break to anything short of sixth.

I had just started to relax when Gith suddenly stiffened, his head jerking sharply toward the gate.

"Commander!" he cried, addressing Bethiv. "Another church company is inbound!"

"So that’s what they’re waiting for," Bethiv replied, stroking his chin. "The Death Wings will probably hit us when their reinforcements arrive. I doubt they’ll be so stupid as to try and harry us with magic, so prepare for close-quarters combat against both parties. Don’t let your guard down and rely on the Oracle’s magic too much. There are still a few sixth-level warriors in the Death Wing, and I suspect we’ve started getting too much attention from the church. We might be seeing their elite soldiers soon."

The soldiers nodded and used the final moments of peace to prepare themselves. We’d defended the shard for nearly an hour by now, and even their enhanced physiques were getting tired. But their eyes blazed with conviction, determined to defend the objective to the end.