The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (36 page)

They had six days to improve the Wards and pour their power into them, and to build traps and catapults with various magic improvements.  Then came the next attack, late in the evening.

The Wards did indeed hold against a repeat of the last explosion, though it destroyed many of the newly-built catapults and a few of the traps, as well as two of the nearer sub-surface emplacements.  The remainder of those took their toll on the thousands of demons who arrived a moment later, though it was a small fraction of them who were killed.  They all appeared as flat black spheres, for their new Shielding was all that could be seen of them, and they were now protected from the Brain Bomb spell.

They immediately began attacking the Wards with everything they had, and they kept it up.  Though the non-combatants didn’t perceive it, to the rest the sky was full of fire and fury, and the air was filled with a physical cacophony of noise and a psionic din, all of which seemed impossible to block out completely.

None of them slept that night, and they met in the hall again after breakfast to meld their minds and their power, and continued to pour their power into the Wards, and occasionally make further improvements to them.  Unfortunately, they had made so many changes to the Wards, and added so many layers to them, and woven the many layers together in so many ways, and the demons were subjecting them to such an incredible barrage of powers, that they could no longer be sure of the effect of Translocating out through the Wards, or of casting a spell through them.  The Translocation might fail, the spell might reflect back, and either might disrupt the Wards themselves.

This left them unable to counter-attack the demons, and all they could do was continue to strengthen the Wards and their defenses, and be prepared to evacuate if they started to fail.  Wittan and his engineering team began building more walls and fortifications on the top of the ridge around the valley, including great drop-gates for the passes to the valleys of the unicorns and Mark’s back yard. They built rows of traps, walls and catapults just above the beach.  It soon became obvious that the demons intended to keep attacking the Wards until they
did
fail, no matter how long it took, which inspired the community to put more of their magic and most of their physical effort into improving the physical defenses.  The entire settlement rapidly became a fortress.

For thirteen days and fourteen nights the attack on their Wards continued, and the mood of the community steadily deteriorated.

Finally the twins sat up in bed just before dawn, deeply Linked and fuming with rage.  “That is
it!!!”
they yelled in perfect unison as Valentia joined their Link.

“No, do it like this!”
she told them as she saw what they were going to do, and showed them her alternative.

They had planned to simply Translocate outside the Wards and attack the enemy in their rage, but they immediately saw the wisdom and brilliance of what she was showing them.

They took her with them as they Translocated to just below the Wards and hovered in Flight.  She was going to cast the spell with them, but their furious rage was so awesome and intimidating that she just gave them control of her power, then leaned back to watch.

They cast their power through the Wards and the demons’ attacking spells, above the demons to the empty sky, and there their power suddenly became The FireStorm.  They screamed their rage and their hate as the lightning-shot hurricane of fire formed, and the swirling, flaming mass full of fire-tornadoes dropped onto the demons.

Mark had been sitting in the kitchen with Talia and Alilia, drinking tea in a frustrated and grumpy state of battle-readiness.  He was the first to realize what was happening and checked the Wards in a fraction of a second, and found them unaffected by what his children were doing.

“Damn right!!” he growled as he instantly gathered all the available power in the community and passed it to his children with a Draw spell. 
“I have the Command Link!”
he announced as the twins accepted the power and directed it into their spell, still screaming and shaking their clenched fists as they brought the Firestorm down to the dome while intensifying it and making it grow quickly enough to catch many of the demons who tried to escape.

Within six seconds a quarter of the demons were dead, and the rest had fled.

“YES!!  Take THAT, stupid demons!!!” Helemia yelled at the empty pre-dawn sky, while Reggie yelled;

“HA!  Who’s tough now?!!!  Who’s strong now, you ugly smelly scum!!!”

Suddenly they both stopped celebrating, even as those on the ground below began.  They turned all the way around, looking out at the ground around the Wards.

“What is it?” Valentia asked as Karzog appeared beside them.

“The land that we burned out there hasn’t been Restored, and Quewanak hasn’t said the exercise was finished.” Reggie flatly stated.  “This isn’t over.  They’ll be back, and they’ll be back today, or Quewanak would’ve just said it was over and started another exercise tomorrow.”

“Let’s get down to the hall. I’m sure everyone’s gonna want a meeting.” Helemia suggested, then Translocated the four of them without waiting for an answer.

Sure enough, about half the community joined them in the hall over the next few minutes.  The rest decided to get some sleep.

The twins were given a rousing cheer, and they tried to get Valentia to take a bow with them, but she demurred and cheered them along with the rest.

“Valentia was just as responsible for that as us.” Helemia announced as soon as the noise had dropped.  “She figured out how to cast that through our Wards without causing a disruption, she suggested we do so, her version of the spell was eleven percent more efficient than ours and took four-fifths as much time to cast, and if she hadn’t said anything we’d have just gone outside the Wards and started blasting away like infants having a tantrum.

“Give her a big cheer!  Valentia!!!”

This time she had no choice but to accept her people’s tribute, and stood blushing, smiling, and fidgeting as they gave it.

“As fine as that was, we have other things to think about.” Mark announced.  “The demons will be back today.  Quewanak hasn’t announced the end of the exercise.”

“He hasn’t restored the forest we burnt either.” Reggie pointed out.

“Darn it father, we were gonna say that!” Helemia scolded, but she was smiling.

“We can’t let people think you kids are the only quick thinkers in the family.” Mark chuckled.

“Here’s our status.” Yazadril explained.  “Between the Wards’ new reflective and absorbent qualities, and with the power we were putting into them every day, versus the power the demons were using to attack them, we could have held out for another nine days before the Wards started to fail.  We spent a lot of power against the demons just now, and we’re all mostly expended, so we have to hope they don’t attack again for at least ten hours, or our margin of safety will shrink even further.  If they wait for more than ten ours, we’ll be sufficiently recovered to resume charging the Wards while keeping a prudent reserve, and our safety margin will grow.”

“And it shrinks if they think of something new to do, and grows if
we
do.” Mark pointed out.  “The kids here took out about fourteen hundred demons just now, a quarter of them Greater Demons, so unless they come up with a counter to the Firestorm, they’ll lose a lot every time they get hit like that.  We can hope Quewanak will have them decide that it’s not worth the losses to keep going with that, but I wouldn’t count on it.  So we still have to think of something new.”

“And we have to do it quickly.” Hilsith insisted.  “All of us need to get as much sleep and recovery as we can before the demons return!  Most of you are either about to fall asleep on your feet, or you’re on the verge of overdosing on various sleep-banishing and stimulant spells.”

“All right.” Mark nodded.  “Now kids, your Firestorm sure did a good job of burning through the demons’ new Battle Shields, and I’m sure it fit your mood at the moment, and it was quite spectacular.  But I’m hoping we can make it more precise.  A lot of the fire and wind you cast out there didn’t affect any demons directly.  Maybe you could cast it as a bunch of smaller firestorms, one for each demon, just big enough to get through their Shields and toast them good…”

In twenty-six minutes they had designed a small, very intense fire-tornado that was automatically self-replicating and self-aiming, then they set a number of Sentry spells and went to bed.

The demons attacked again some seven hours later.  There appeared to be the same number of them who had fled last time, so they weren’t being re-enforced, which was a blessing.  They began with another mighty explosion, then began raining down spells and fire again.  Everyone was so deeply asleep that it was more than five seconds later before Reggie, Helemia, and Mark responded with the new, concentrated Firestorm spell.  They got another third of the demons with it before the rest fled.

Again, Quewanak did not call an end to the exercise.  Some went back to bed, some went back to building, and the rest went back to charging the Wards, though they didn’t have much power available for it.

The colony’s response time was down to two seconds at the next attack six hours later, but the demons were expecting it now.  They only cast the gigantic explosion and fled before any were struck down by the Firestorm.

The next attack was only an hour later, but Povon responded in a fraction of a second and killed another four hundred demons before they could all flee.  They still managed to cast their explosion before she struck them though, and each explosion deteriorated the Wards to a significant degree.

It became a battle of attrition.  They killed some demons almost every time, and the explosions became weaker and weaker, but so did their Firestorms and their Wards.  Still the attacks increased in frequency, and stabilized at just more than two per hour.

The Wards failed at midmorning the next day, and by that time there were somewhat less than six hundred demons left.  The colonists then realized that they had waited too long; they should have evacuated before then, but now they were so depleted that they lacked the power to evacuate them all to safety away from Hiliani.  And they refused to abandon any of their comrades.

But as the battle began in earnest, it was seen that the demons were also almost completely depleted of magic.

“Damn it, we can still win this!”
Mark angrily declared
.  “We fight on until we only have enough power left to Translocate our survivors to the shelters, then we fall back!”

Most of the settlers took to the air as the fight commenced, and it soon spread in the skies far beyond the settlement.  Mark and his family and the three dragons formed the settlement’s most effective squadron, attacking wherever the demons were most numerous, or where defenders were hard-pressed.  Every once in a while, when they remembered that it was only an exercise, it was a lot of fun to be swooping through the skies together, dodging and blocking attacks and blasting at the demons.

Over the next six hours, as the forces on both sides ran out of power, the fight degraded from flying and casting careful attack spells, to ground-fighting and only using their magic for Shielding, and finally to purely muscle-powered warfare as it had existed eons ago.

The colonists soon wiped out the demons who had landed in the community, then it became siege warfare against the three hundred or so enemies outside the ridge, who outnumbered the surviving defenders by three-to-one.  The engineers’ recent works proved their worth, for now the demons had to scale a steep slope and a sheer wall to get into the settlement, or go around the edge of the ridge and approach from the channel.  Few chose the latter course, as the demons were uncomfortable and generally ineffective in water, though they could all swim to one degree or another.  Those few died on the beach, skewered by arrows and huge bolts from the ballistae.

The siege went on for nineteen hours, with three-quarters of the defenders on the walls and the rest defending the beach.  Mark and his family stood and fought together atop the wide walls, defending against the occasional rushes of the demons with bows, swords, and throwing darts, and they were glad that the spells on their armor and weapons were permanently or semi-permanently charged.  They were also very glad for The Skills of Visinniria.

They fought between the dragons, with the four children in the middle to take advantage of their many hours of sparring together, and their family training in the evenings paid off handsomely as well.  They kept a fairly tight formation; Kragorram on the left end with Talia and Alilia beneath him or to his right, Karzog in the middle with Helemia, Reggie, and Valentia in front of and beneath him, then Mark with Povon above him and to his right.

The dragons wore chain vests, knee and elbow covers and gauntlets of plate armor, thin steel blades on the leading edges of their wings, steel spikes on their tails, and wielded light swords, knives, lances and crossbows sized to their mighty proportions.  Kragorram had crafted all of these items, sometimes with his mate or his son’s assistance.

Mark and his family all wore their finest armor and bore their finest weapons.  The children used the armor and weapons they’d received as birthday presents, while Mark and Talia wore mismatched full-plate armor that they’d assembled and fitted from many different sets in order to ensure that each piece they wore was the most functional and comfortable of it’s type that they owned, from their gauntlets to their boots.  As they’d learned in their first course of training with Quewanak, appearance was irrelevant once battle was joined.  Mark’s hands bore only GrimFang; the great black two-handed sword that cut any material without resistance.  Talia alternated between Ria and a highly spelled short bow, while Alilia distained armor in favor of an elven Belt of Protection with seemingly infinite charge that turned every weapon that struck at her before they could reach her skin.  She wielded a black staff of power topped with a diamond as big as her fist, and it struck with a Concussion capable of blasting the biggest Greater Demon off the wall.  She remarked during a pause in the battle that it held enough charge to keep doing so for centuries, continuously.