Chapter Thirty-Seven: Running Battle

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Running Battle

Tom was tired. He couldn’t ever remember being so bone-weary. Not during the Reaping, when he had spent days abused by orcs and then more fleeing through a forest with only a handful of skills to his name, or during the guerilla war in the Deep, when they had spent months trekking back and forth, constantly laying ambushes and fending off orcs.

After Sunrise had used her surge skill and frozen the orc cavalry, the expedition had kept moving at full speed. For nearly an hour, everyone threw out every buff, used every possible tactic they could to increase their speed while remaining cohesive as a group. They had gone on like that for over an hour until Sunrise had finally called for them to slow.

Tom could see that they had outpaced the grand majority of the pursuit already. So long as they kept going, the majority of the beasts following them, and the orcs on foot, would never catch up. Things like snakes and scorpions were better adapted to lie in wait for their prey rather than chase it down.

They were not out of danger yet, though. There were still plenty of beasts that could catch up to them. They couldn’t keep running for the entire week and change that it would take them to return to Horizon. They kept that more manageable pace, one that conserved both their stamina and mana, for another hour before the mounted orcs caught up again.

The second battle played out much the same as it had before. Idealists raised obstructions to any flanking and unleashed a withering fusilade upon them as they charged. Then they engaged in desperate hand to hand combat, trying to minimise casualties as best they could. This time, the orcs eventually broke off the attack themselves and swept back into the Grounds.

They didn’t go far though, merely circling the tired and injured expedition like a wolf circling an wounded deer. In the first battle almost thirty of the monks had been killed. In the second, another twenty were slain. They had managed to kill over half of the orcish cavalry in return, but the cost was incredibly steep. They were still very much teetering on the edge of destruction.

For three days now, the expedition had fought a running battle with the cavalry, not sleeping, never stopping. They were nearly evenly matched in numbers now, which meant that the orcs were outmatched, but they were also incredibly canny.

Although most of the ground-based creatures had been left far behind, nearly all of the aerial ones were more than capable of keeping pace with them. Creatures like winewolves, the plains scavenger dogs, and grass, soil, and earth sprites couldn’t quite match pace with them, but everytime they slowed down the expedition was in danger of being swarmed.

The orc cavalry had a very simple plan: let the huge packs of dogs and wolves set the pace of the expedition. They had to move faster than them, which was faster than they could move the whole way home. Eventually they would wear out.

They supplemented this simple plan with aerial harassment by wind sprites and raptors. The monks had nowhere near enough familiars to go toe-to-toe in the air now, so they had to wait until they came close enough for the monks to attack them with skills. To make things worse, due to the ephemeral nature of the wind sprites, many of the monks with decent ranged skills could only just barely affect them, if they could affect them at all.

Tom kept Sus and Sol close, but not subbed. The two birds were a valuable defence against the vicious sprites, being able to discorporate them with their channelled Silence mana shields, and their own miniature Hushes. They couldn’t move out of range of the expedition’s skills though or they would be overwhelmed and torn apart.

Tom’s Agony and Hush skills were also being put to constant use. Both could affect the wind sprites, and the former was also effective against the fragile raptors as well. Rosa was finding her fire skills stymied by the peerless control of air the aerial creatures were demonstrating, but her Smoke and Speed skills were getting a working out.

Darius was being worked to the bone. He was constantly moving, constantly casting skills as his mana allowed, constantly fighting off creatures as best he could. When he was low on mana, or there was noone to heal and nothing to kill, he would throw a tired comrade’s arm around his shoulder and help them move. He had Granny constantly ferrying at least two people along on her shell, giving them a chance to rest on the move too.

Tom was proud of Darius. The man was a whirlwind, more or less perfectly fitting into his new role as a healer. He himself hadn’t even thought to have Sesame carry others to give them a chance to rest, but both he and Rosa had quickly followed his example.

When Darius manifested his final skill under Healing, it came as no surprise to Tom. He could about physically see the pressure the young monk was putting himself under to try and keep everyone alive. Ensuring his bees had solid coverage, using them to see when anyone was injured by a raptor or wind sprite, and then darting back and forth to heal them. And then seamlessly switching to reinforce whichever side of them the mounted orcs hit, fighting and healing at once, whenever they decided to take a stab at them.

Tom hadn’t the chance to ask Darius for the specifics of the new skill, and the monk had left their party upon returning to the Monastery, so he couldn’t see his wisp or call up his status either. But the effect was fairly obvious: it allowed Darius to teleport a decent distance to an ally, and placed a heal on that ally when he arrived. It was extremely serendipitous, given the constantly moving combat they were currently engaged in.

Tom and Rosa both gained uplifts not long after. Rosa uplifted Quick Escape, a passive that increased her movement by a trivial amount for every enemy within a short range of her. She chose an option that increased the range to moderate, which was a much larger buff than increasing the buff itself from trivial to low. It was far more effective as long as there were plenty of enemies nearby as opposed to few, and right now that seemed like a wise choice.

Tom uplifted Hush. For once, he got no fancy new effects, just a choice between higher duration, or lower cooldown or mana cost. He upped the duration. He had more than enough mana to throw around, so the duration would make the biggest difference. He was pleased to see that the version of the skill that Sus and Sol gained access to had its duration increased from short to short/moderate when his went from moderate to moderate/long.

The uplifts were well-timed. The orcs began steadily increasing the pressure, probably realising that they were tiring, running low on sleep and supplies, and still far from home. Sunrise sensed their intentions, and passed out orders. Soon enough, she was proved prescient.

The cavalry swept in towards their flank just before they reached the northern trade road through the Grounds. At the same time, several gusts of wind sprites came arrowing down towards them, various other raptors diving alongside. Sus and Sol could see the great packs of dogs and wolves in the distance, relentless in their pursuit, now surging in speed, making a bid to catch them while the orcs and sprites pinned them down.

The expedition braced themselves, knowing that this was the orcs’ final bid to stop them. They had run them to exhaustion over three days of constant, unrelenting harassment, but if they drew out the chase too much longer then they would lose too many numbers and not be able to overwhelm them.

Rosa and their Fire-adjacent Idealists worked to summon a wall of flames and send it sweeping towards the charging orcs. Tom picked out wind sprites, discorporating them as fast as his cooldowns allowed with Hush and Agony. Several other monks with access to the rare typeless damage, or other damage that could affect the sprites, also focused on them. They had but one monk with a Supreme Ideal of Lightning, and she focused on the diving raptors.

Everyone else came about to face the cavalry and brace themselves. Squaring up to such huge orcs riding such vicious creatures had not gotten any easier. But they were resolute. They either won, here, now, or died. Everyone knew it.

The charge crashed into their line, blunted at the last moment by earthen bulwarks dragged from the ground. Then they were among them, laying about themselves with their massive bone clubs, hurling javelins with enough force to pass clean through a man and pin them to the dirt.

Slowing auras warred against speed buffs. Monks were dragged out of position and into the savage claws and fangs of grass sharks. The orc cavalry was fully committed. And then something changed.

The monks began to speed up, over and above the interlaced buffs they were working under. Flurries of claws, savage lunges, and lightning quick stabs of serrated tails were suddenly dodged, avoided by the narrowest of margins. Then, with a fury, they counterattacked.

Abbess Sunrise had long since recovered her mana after using her surge skill to allow them to escape. As a leader of the Monastery of the Bloody Dawn, she had access to more resources than any of them. But the cooldown for such a skill was horrendously long. The ability to fix such a large group of enemies in time, for almost half an hour, was outrageous. Through all the uplifts for it, she had clearly focused on its power to the exclusion of all else. In any fight where she wasn’t hopelessly outnumbered, it would be an unbeatable trump card.

But Sunrise was a Flawless Idealist, raised through the ranks of the Monastery of the Bloody Dawn to Abbess, and she had other cards to play.

The channelled skill she was currently extending over nearly one hundred people, speeding up all of them in time, was one of them.

The skill, being channelled, and currently affecting so many people, must have been ruinously expensive, but Sunrise merely gritted her teeth and called for them to push. The monks surged forward, all of them more than able to take advantage of the sudden disparity in speed between themselves and the orcs, and began to slaughter.

Tom revelled in it, watching the one-sided slaughter where he could through the eyes of his owls. He himself had been designated as one of the few who could keep the wind sprites off them, and he was doing his level best to pull as many from the air as possible. Standing in Sesame’s saddle, he struck out with his Silence mana infused spear when any dived too close, ripping them apart with ease.

Focusing as they were on the orcs, and killing them as quickly as they could, the aerial attacks were the largest threat to the monks. Sped up as they were, most could react in time and avoid diving attacks, and most of those who couldn’t were healed. Still, with such a chaotic battle, there were casualties. It was to be expected.

The monks fought furiously, reaping orcs like wheat, but the true battle was a battle against time. There was only so long Sunrise could keep her channelling going. The monks fought hard to take advantage, and by the time Sunrise dropped the channell, only a handful of orcs remained.

The remnants were dispatched with ease, now on the receiving end of being outnumbered. Tom watched as Sunrise gulped down a potion, a grim look on her face. He could see why.

When the last of the orcish cavalry had died, the nearby beasts lost most of their cohesion. The wind sprites were still attacking, vicious creatures that they were, but most of the raptors had been thrown into disarray before winging away. They were not naturally inclined to attack such a large group of humans.

If it were just the remaining wind sprites attacking then they could have handled them easily. But eliminating the orcs had taken enough time that the winewolves and plains dogs and other sprites had caught up, and though they were no longer being controlled, a large group of injured humans was irresistible to them.

They came on with a vengeance. The monks barely had enough time to turn before the first of the canines crashed into their line.

The monks hunkered down, trying to weather the storm. They fought defensively, retreating slowly, but more and more and more beasts were piling up to them, piling over each other, all in a desperate bloody frenzy.

Tom was in awe of the monks’ discipline. Even as some were pulled under the tide and savaged, they maintained their slow, steady retreat. With each step backwards they reaped dozens of lives.

Then, finally, Abbess Sunrise stepped forwards to the front line. Tired, her face set in a stony mask, she raised her hands. Tom felt a storm of mana brewing within her, and with a small gasp, she released her skill.

Cracks, hair-thin, almost invisible, spread from her in a chaotic, flowering, mess. They branched forward, haphazard, describing barely noticeable paths through the mass of creatures. Then grew and grew, their speed increasing, until they had covered hundreds of creatures.

Then she drew her hands towards herself, clenching them into fists.

There was a sound like cloth ripping, if one side of the cloth was space and the other time. All in front of the monks, all throughout the teeming horde of beasts and sprites, there was a change.

A second’s pause, then another. Then all of a sudden, bodies began to fall.

Limbs fell away from torsos. Heads were severed from necks. Great rents opened in the bodies of innumerable creatures. Blood sprayed into the air. Body parts tumbled along the ground, carried onwards by their momentum.

In the space of a breath, a thousand creatures became thousands of pieces. Not even the sprites were immune. Bursts of energy, brown and green and blue and yellow, fired off crazily as they were discorporated. The remnants of the horde fled, scattering back into the Grounds at large.

Abbess Sunrise collapsed, the strain of using her second surge skill too much for her after everything that had happened. She was caught by nearby monks, carried carefully away. The rest of them knew what to do. She had given them their orders before the battle.

Several monks went to retrieve as many orc bodies as they could. Several more gathered up the corpses of beasts, to see if anything could be gleaned from them back at Horizon. Tom and the other scouts immediately sent their familiars out, to warn of any further pursuit.

The healers flitted back and forth like sparrows, stabilising the most injured and staving off death. Darius, bloodied and torn himself, was no exception. Tom watched as he ran himself ragged, using every last dreg of his mana getting his brothers and sisters ready to move again.

It took another half hour before everyone was as ready as could be. Many monks still had fairly severe injuries, but everyone could walk. Those few who couldn’t were loaded up onto familiars.

As the chaos died, and everyone began tramping onwards, back to Horizon, Darius was still. Tom noticed him after a few moments. He had a puzzled look on his face, then a slow, sunny smile broke.

Tom could not see his wisp, but if he had to bet, it had just gained its third colour.