Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

A hush fell over the soldiers on the wall. The temperature dropped noticeably, seemingly taking the humidity with it.

All movement on the wall ceased—no one so much as fidgeted. Eyes were trained on the fog below, the soldiers' breath becoming visible and puffing in front of them as though a physical representation of their unease.

The stillness accompanying the fog was almost more unsettling than if it had arrived with a raucous cacophony. Everyone expected siege weapons, battle cries, and the screams of the dying. This subversive quiet and stillness set teeth on edge. If she thought about it, Julia could almost hear jaws clenching around her.

Off in the distance, a scraping could be heard—quiet, at first.

Thump.

Scrape.

Thump.

Scrape.

It steadily grew louder, though Julia couldn't place the sound. It appeared to echo around the fog, as though the fog itself was obscuring the source.

Thump-thump.

Scrape.

Thump-thump

Scrape.

As the sound drew nearer, Julia realized that the thump was actually a collection of several sounds happening at the same time.

Footsteps.

What she was hearing was the coordinated march of an approaching army. How? They should be sloshing through the water, at the very least—or moving below it. The marsh was deep in front of the wall.

Julia's breath frosted in front of her, momentarily drawing her attention. Of course—the temperature. The fog itself wasn't the spell—it was a byproduct. The real spell was a massive, army-wide cooling spell to freeze the water. The undead were marching atop a frozen marsh.

The scrapes, by comparison, were much quieter—perhaps from fewer troops making the noise? It carried a sinister timbre that elevated it to be just as frightening as the march of the horde.

Huge weapons from shock troops scraping across the ice as they're dragged? Or, some new type of undead we've not seen before?

Julia tried to imagine what the noise could be, but she couldn't place it. She felt it a fruitless endeavor, as she would likely discover its source very soon.

"Nock," Avelrûn said loudly into the stillness.

Several soldiers started at the sudden volume. A clamor arose as arrows were put to strings, a rustle of feathers and scraping of hands on wood. Julia realized that the unexpected stillness had made her hyper aware of all the sounds around her, to the point that a soldier drawing his bow near her was as loud as the approaching undead.

A great gust of foul air suddenly assaulted the forces atop the wall, hacks and retches immediately following. The wind that kicked up buffeted them with the stench of death as well as a low moan, as though the wind itself was dying.

A creak here, a rustling there—hands were tightening around bows, fingers were fiddling with the fletching on arrows. Morale was falling, Julia realized. These troops had largely not seen the undead conflict; they were stationed in Veshari.

Perhaps some, particularly those of the Dahmir'veth, had had contact with the Nashiin, but even they had likely not encountered them as an organized military force. These undead were far different from the shambling skeletons that could be found in the wild.

A new sound rose, the source unmistakeable.

Thump.

Haa!

Thump.

Haa!

In between every step, the undead shouted a battle cry, the sound so deafening that Julia thought she could feel the wall rumble beneath her. The estimates were for at least a hundred thousand Nashiin, possibly more, and if they all yelled at once, this would be how Julia would expect it to feel—for a vibration like this was as much a feeling as a sound.

Julia glanced around her, noting unconsciously bared teeth, white knuckles, and the whites of eyes in the soldiers. Avelrûn didn't seem interested in recovering morale, so Julia would have to do something herself. She could only hope the other Roots paid closer attention to their troops' spirits elsewhere on the wall.

Julia wasn't much of a leader—she didn't have the experience to know what to do here. What could counter the dread a hundred thousand dead screams invoked?

She glanced around and, finding nothing to aid her, she improvised.

She listened to the timing of the undead march, waiting for just before the shout, and slammed her boot down with all the force she could muster.

The impact was…more than she expected—she focused so much on magic that she frequently forgot that her body was constantly improving as well.

Her boot smashed the wood beneath her, cratering it inward with a diameter about the size of her whole foot—whoops. It had the desired effect, though.

Soldiers jumped, turning their heads to look at the source of such a loud sound directly behind them. Julia didn't wait for them to process; she raised her foot again and stomped just before the undead shout. She did this over and over again, creating a steady rhythm that ran counter to the Nashiin's.

After a couple of stomps, Ithshar and her squad—along with the Thornalûn—joined in. A loud stomping was now permeating the air around Julia, drawing attention away from the dread march below.

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It started small—a soldier here, one there—but before long, the entire top of the wall was stomping in time, matching Julia's rhythm. It wasn't anything big; there was no grand speech or dramatic rallying of spirits, but Julia thought the steady rhythm and the soldiers' participation in it had lowered the rising tensions, refocusing the attention on the task at hand—they were here to defeat these creatures, not cower before them.

Julia stole a glance at Avelrûn and caught the unmistakable scowl he sent her way, tight-lipped and disapproving. However, she quickly looked away, ignoring him. They were well beyond the point where things like egos and tempers mattered. This wasn't about one-upping anyone, or even being right—it was about survival. No...not just survival. It was about winning.

Suddenly, the footfalls from below stopped, along with the shouting. Julia and the soldiers continued their stomping, but now they stomped into silence, each impact echoing against the unnatural hush with tangible defiance.

The fog lifted with a whoosh of fetid air, uncovering the army. To Julia's eyes, though, it seemed as if the sea of roiling purple fog had simply been exchanged for a sea of white, grey, and black.

Skeletons beyond counting surrounded the wall, the crowd of them so dense she could scarcely tell where one ended and the next began. The glow from their collective purple eyes was so bright to her Spiritual Sight that the crowd looked to be on fire.

Julia could just make out the different variations of Nashiin: the gleam of a purple reflection off sharp Ghûl claws, the dull glint of cruddy iron armor donned by a Revenant, and even the dim glow of what she assumed were Wraiths—though she'd yet to actually see one.

This crowd was peculiar, though. Julia did a quick count and estimated the advanced forces, those forces stronger than the average skeleton, were less than ten percent of the total assemblage before the wall. This did not match what Julia had seen around the marsh prior to the Nashiin's organized march.

Why were there so few advanced troops? Why were they organized so closely that they likely couldn't move without bumping into each other? This made no tactical sense—and that was what made it frightening. Their leaders didn't make such simple mistakes. So why this?

Before she could consider further, the horde suddenly screamed. This was not the organized military bellow they had issued on their march. This was a bloodcurdling scream of thousands of damned souls, all jumbled together. The air shook from the volume and force of the bellow such that Julia felt her eyes vibrating.

She did not stop stomping—if anything, beginning to stomp even louder. Morale could not falter before the battle had even begun. They were already starting this conflict at a drastic disadvantage; they could not be put immediately on the backfoot.

Ithshar, the experienced leader she was, both immediately identified the issue and enacted her own solution: she began to sing. She sang to the rhythm of Julia's stomping, now carried by the entire force of soldiers before her, lending her song a powerful punch.

For the land we defend

(stomp)

We dare!

(stomp)

For the lives we protect

(stomp)

No fear!

(stomp)

For the fight we must win

(stomp)

Stand tall!

(stomp)

For the Song we uphold

(stomp)

We call!

(stomp)

The song repeated, quick and punchy. It was easy to remember and had a clear call-and-response. Before she even finished the second loop, soldiers were beginning to shout the responses.

The song that developed saw Ithshar singing the calling lines, and the soldiers shouting the responses with all their might, throwing their voices at the Nashiin below like weapons themselves. What began as a rhythmic song soon evolved into a martial chant that swept up the spirits of the defenders, giving them no option but to become involved.

Before Julia could process the chant and its effects on morale, she herself was screaming the responses, stomping the ground with renewed vigor. A smile threatened her lips—not one of joy, but of impending doom. For when death looks you in the eyes, you can do nothing but face it, so you might as well smile.

She felt her ears pounding, not from the sounds around her, but from the blood pumping in her veins. She felt as though her blood pressure would burst her vessels. Her fingers twitched, barely restrained—lusting for the sword at her waist.

Bloodlust, she realized. The adrenaline and nervousness had built up into a near-unquenchable excitement that boiled the blood in her veins. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff—knowing your death lies at the bottom, and craving the drop anyway.

"Draw!" Avelrûn shouted, just barely audible over the tumult of the shouts of the living and the dead.

Julia heard the rustle of ranged weapons behind her, and with every drop of restraint she could manage, she raised her hand.

Her squad, no matter how Avelrûn planned to use them, was an auxiliary. They needed to respond to changes in the flow of battle quickly and precisely, and for that, they needed to save their energy.

She heard weapons lower behind her, and she almost felt an instinctive sadness. Her subconscious seemed to want nothing more than to draw her own sword and leap into the crowd of undead below.

This sudden self-awareness made her wary. She was leading in this battle—she couldn't afford any berserker-style rage taking hold. Adrenaline and excitement were helpful, but she couldn't lose her head completely.

"Aim!" Avelrûn shouted, the soldiers continuing the chant as best they could with bows drawn.

The crunch of strings tightening echoed across the wall, as though a symphony had joined the melody of the soldiers' chant.

The screams of the undead cut off just as suddenly as they began, the precision of the cessation unnerving.

The soldiers stopped their chant just as soon as the Nashiin, and for a brief moment, all was silent. Even the wind, previously a constant moan like the low wailing of a dying animal in the distance, stilled.

Julia felt as though she had jumped off a cliff, and she was in that brief moment where her jump's momentum still carried her up into the air. Time nearly became non-linear in that moment, when near-certain death lay below you, yet you were still filled with the excitement of the jump.

Sensory information came to her, crisp and sharp. She smelled the rotten air that accompanied thousands of undead, along with the faint humidity and stink of the marsh water, so common to her now.

She saw fear in the soldiers' eyes—tempered by determination—as they marked their quarries, bows at full draw and arms shaking with the strain.

She heard the lap of waves off in the distance, where the marsh wasn't yet frozen. She heard the faint crunching of ice as it groaned beneath the weight of the undead.

More than anything, she felt her blood pounding in her head, her fingers twitching. She felt a bead of sweat, despite the cold, drip off her brow onto her nose. She heard her heart pounding, as though it meant to break through both her rib cage and the chestplate over top of it.

Time felt infinite in this moment: the deep inhale before the chaos.

Julia donned her Blacksteel helmet—fashioned from the remains of a Barrowlord. The first Barrowlord she'd ever fought crushed her previous helmet, and it wouldn't do to expose her head in battle—even if it didn't carry the same weakness that a human's head might.

"Loose!" Avelrûn cried.

The twang and thump of bowstrings snapping spread through the silence like a shockwave, the only indication that a major milestone had passed: the battle for the marsh had begun.