NOVEL NEXT 281 – Perilous March
In the end, the statues turned out orders of magnitude more important than thought. They were not merely a hardened frontline with functionally zero logistical overhead, they were also not a mere autonomous weapons system. The Revered and Reviled among them understood commands, they merely chose to ignore them if those commands did not clearly line up with the defense of willowdale. One had to explicitly mention that the greatest immediate threat to Willowdale was several days’ march to the north-east, and only then would they respond to commands to follow the Elimination Force. This excepted the Guardian of the Wall - it exhibited uncanny, almost fully human intelligence. It creeped Crovacus out.
Zelsys distributed her remaining stormward talismans exactly as she had intended to, picking out those who gave her the right gut feeling and choosing… A disproportionate number of First-model tank pilots. Two tankmen, in addition to Strake and Collier. The others were an exceptionally wizard-looking wizard and an Eagle-man in shamanistic garb who seemed to command respectable wind magic.
So it was that the valiant Elimination Force marched, the Sixty-Six at its core, hundreds more in tow, and all others remaining to protect Willowdale. A harrowing march, deep into the Fulguric Denial Zone.
Even Crovacus chose to come with, taking solace in the knowledge that the grave political consequences of his death at the hands of a Pateirian loyalist would at least help turn his family and their associates against the empire, not to mention his former Hunter’s Guild colleagues. It would, however, also cause a civil war within Grekuria’s merchant guilds, or rather, between the Evoy-run Merchant Guilds and everyone else. If this failed, he would at least die with the reassurance that those filthy rats would get their comeuppance… And the Pateirians, too.
Marching in the stead of a ten-meter statue was an experience not many could claim, the Guardian’s silhouette reminding Estoras of the gigantic corpses that littered the Ikes mountains. The statues’ value was not merely in their strength and resilience, but the manifestation of their nature as guardians.
The marching column was thusly protected from the inevitable and quite frequent claymen and composites which attacked it, for the statues smashed and crushed them with uncanny speed and efficiency. Even at night, when they made camp, the statues stood watch, from their eyes spilling bright glow akin to searchlights as they patrolled the camp and sought out even the smallest sign of a clayman. Lines strewn with talismans of protection and alarm hanged around the campsite and tripwires rigged to grenades further from the camp served as further layers of defense, basic though they were.
However… Even this protection was not impermeable. The statues’ numbers were limited, and even with guardsmen on rotating shifts, the Elimination Force still suffered losses. Many did not sleep at all, and so a measure was drawn: Further DDLV rations, more than enough to counter a couple nights’ lost sleep.
Just as many others, Zelsys only slept in short bursts that night, and only for a minimal total of around three hours, as the majority of her night was spent cleaver in hand, cutting down claymen. She found that the more she fought them, the more she disliked them for their lack of real anatomy to eviscerate, and the more she enjoyed destroying their cores. It was more tense than constant battle; and on-again off-again series of skirmishes carrying long into the morning. At times, an hour would pass with scarcely anything happening, and in these gaps, precious rest was to be found. Zefaris was used to this, this was familiar to her, comfortable even, but many even among the Elimination Force struggled, as they were, after all, majority those who had not joined the Ikesian army for one reason or another.
Kargarian Irregulars, mercenaries, deserters, old men who used tank suits to make up for their fading strength, these were the human spine of the Elimination Force.
The second day of marching was no easier, but some of the claymen’s tactics changed. The closer to Ubul’s Tomb they drew, the more claymen were seen wearing uniforms and helmets, some clothed properly, while others were just draped in it, wielding sparklocks as clubs. It was as if they had given up on ambush tactics, not coming out in the open, making themselves clearly known, and only then attacking - or at least, those of them who still wore the remnants of their uniforms, as if this tangential figment of humanity made the claymen cling to some misbegotten sense of honour.
At last, in the afternoon of the second day, they crossed the threshold of the Fulguric Denial Zone, easily discerned by the tangible electric charge in the air, as well as the starkly cut-off clouds so dark they were as if wrought from tar, barely visible through the canopies of the trees. Those without stormward talismans were strictly prohibited from venturing from beneath the protection of the forest, and the Elimination Force spread out to begin the backbreaking labor of creating what many thought to be a pointless defense line. A dam made of sticks, they thought, built in case a blackstone tidebreaker is swept away by the deluge - the definition of futility. Nevertheless, they labored without cease, retrieving many still-functional mortars and field cannons from the forest immediately surrounding the battlefield while the Sixty-Six and the Statues focused on keeping the claymen out of the way.
There was no enemy line. Only thousands and thousands of claymen, rising from the earth, and at the center of the desolate battlefield, instead of the crater at whose bottom Ubul once stood, there was an egg of compacted soil and rock, towering over everything else. Lightning pounded the structure without cease, and in opposition, soil rose up from its base to replace that which the living storm ablated.
Days passed. Thousands of claymen fell, dozens of men fell in turn, and the whole time, preparations were made. Cannons, mortars, and magicks of all sorts were set loose upon the stone egg, but none seemed to have any effect, the damage being replaced too quickly for headway to be made.
