The Heart Grows

"Well?" Hilda was wearing her heavy armor. She might not have the heritage of Astrid, but she didn't for a second want to risk her own neck to the guns of the city. As for that city, it was shrouded in smoke—the result of masonry having a very bad day.

The runner stopped, catching himself on a picket so he didn't have to slow down. "Something happened to the gate sapping. Most of the squad are dead and their charge went off early. A through C charges went off as planned. D failed to bring its section down. E blew wide open. The four that are open are under heavy fire from the walls, but their shields are holding."

"Any sign of the Ghost?"

"There's a rumor the gate tunnel went off how it did because of the Ghost. Nearly everyone who walked out of that place fell over dead before making it ten steps from the entrance. When they started dying, some guards were sent in. Someone said they shouted Ghost a moment before the explosion went off." The messenger was worried enough about the Ghost let alone what Hilda might do if he had mentioned them.

Nodding to what she'd expected, Hilda turned her head to look at her sister, Donna. "What about it? Should we wade in and make sure of this?"

"That's how father taught us." Holding out her arm, Hilda was glad for the fierce clasp Donna took of it. "If it's not worth dying for, what are we even doing here?"

Donna laughed. "It'd be a shame if we didn't set this place on fire for Astrid, or soak its flagstones with our own blood." Turning to look at the messenger, she asked, "What's the nearest breach to here?" Like her sister, for this auspicious day, she'd worn her heavy armor.

Pointing to the south of the gate, the runner was in awe of the pair. His palm itched to find a sword, he felt naked without armor. Dropping to one knee, he bowed his head to the two battle goddesses who left his presence.

As the pair approached the breach, they saw there was perhaps a ten foot wide gap of rubble where the wall had collapsed. Their soldiers paused for barely a moment to acknowledge them before renewing the charge.

Grabbing the helmet from her hip, Hilda put it on and let the comfortable, well-known weight settle as she buckled it in place. She waited while her sister did the same, and they both drew their swords together.

Not prone to the rage of battle like Astrid—and definitely not bearing the wolf spirit—Hilda marched through the ranks of her soldiers and heard their constant chatter go silent. They paused before her, then crowded in behind. Each step brought her nearer to the breach. As she started up the rubble, she gave orders for it to be worked into a ramp to make the taking of Northridge faster.

As her eyes came level with the top of the crest, Hilda saw why her soldiers weren't already sacking Northridge. A mess of small things all piled together in her head when she saw a half dragon and the biggest kobold she'd ever seen dealing death to her soldiers.

The reason; there were dungeon monsters and adventurers working together.

The source of the Ghost's powers.

"The damned hole has infested the city." Even now she could see the guards of the city behind the dungeon monsters, reloading rifles. "This is heresy, Donna. Let us end it!"

The fighting around them grew fiercer as their troops, emboldened by the commanders taking the field, rushed forward and into a fury of swinging weapons. The drumming of rifles, mostly aimed at Donna and herself, resulted in far fewer deaths than the defenders likely wished. She brought herself to face the dragon.

When her blade first met the green weapons of the dragon, Hilda could feel a strength rebuff her effort to simply crush the beast's defenses. When a second sword came at her, she began to dance. Strike after strike met either her shield or her own blade, but after the dragon seemed to tire of trading parries and blocks, it opened its mouth and exhaled.

Holding her breath, Hilda raised her shield to protect her face from the spray that poured out. A little of the acid worked between the plates of her armor, but it burned itself out trying to eat through the mail underneath. "My turn."

Done with games and testing its strength, Hilda started advancing. She battered both weapons away with her sword and shoved it bodily backward with her shield. When the dragon bumped into one of the guardsmen who'd been distracted while reloading, it made the fatal mistake of turning its eyes from Hilda.

Like a cobra striking, Hilda took the dragon's left wrist, her weighted adamantine blade cleaving its scales, its flesh, and the bones underneath. With the song of battle playing loud in her heart, Hilda tried to press her advantage only to have her dance partner swap.

Hilda's world was filled with axes. The oversized kobold swung them with such a ferocity and speed that she thought it was some kind of berserker. She spared a glance in Donna's direction, to see her among the riflemen now, mowing them down like wheat to her scythe.

The problem was, for Hilda, the kobold with axes was good. He shifted his weight and danced around her, leading the few swings she managed into clanging strikes of blade on blade—and the kobold's weapons were each heavier than her own.

A glance past the kobold showed Hilda that the dragon was now slowing down her sister, but only long enough for the riflemen to retreat. She'd really rather have killed them all, but opening up the hole in the wall was worth their time here.

From one stroke to the next, the kobold started to back up. One step at a time and seemingly with eyes in the back of his head. It was annoying, but Hilda had no chance but to step back and let the creatures retreat. "Donna! To me!"

"I almost had that beast!" Donna, nonetheless, retreated to her sister's side. "I am starting to see a pattern here. Is this city under the control of the dungeon?"

Still pumped up from the fight with the kobold, Hilda shrugged her armored shoulders. "Or the other way around. That chain you carry, could these southerners have them too?"

"The priests swore to me this is a one of a kind artifact. They told me no other exists. They may be lying." Shrugging her shoulders, Donna took note of something. "The bodies are gone."

Snarling and spitting on the ground through a gap in her helmet, Hilda said, "Cursed dark heresy. They bring back their dead somewhere in the city. Scouts! Locate their worship halls and find what ones are active. Go!

"Move that rubble! Come on, open this hole up!" Turning her attention to the nearest sergeant, Hilda grasped their shoulder. "Combat squad, come with us. Let's find this hole and end its connection to the city. Sister, call up your engineers to cap it off."

Standing atop the southern tower over the main gate of Northridge, Brolly Windchime took in everything that was going on. The city itself felt like it was in a panic. Its beautiful walls had been undermined, despite Ludmiller's best efforts to stop the sapping work, and now the attackers were breaching the gaps this created.

There was one large breach and three smaller ones. The large one, surprisingly, was the easiest to defend. More rubble meant that the attackers were struggling to pick their way through the hole in the wall, and that gave his shooters plenty of time to line up, take their shots, and pass off the rifle to be reloaded.

"Sir! They've broken through the southern gap nearest us!"

Snapping his attention around, Brolly walked to the wall overlooking that breach and saw two swordsmen in the dull metal armor that could only be one material. Heavy interlocking plates and full helmets that gave little chance of avoiding the armor. What should have been there was corpses, a dragon, a kobold, and four squads of riflemen. "What happened?"

"We think it was their commanders. They were unstoppable, sir. Even the dungeon-kin couldn't do more than keep them off our people while we fell back. The rest of my squad is in the temple."

The last sentence had a meaningful edge to it that Brolly recognized. "Good work getting word to me so fast. Go and see to your squad and get them up to speed as fast as you can." The pride of the messenger, previously vacant, shone through again after the praise.

"Thank you, sir." Turning, the guardsman descended from the rampart.

Looking at the roguish lizard sitting to one side of his map table, Brolly said, "I don't know what condition you're in to help, but anything would be good right now. More of that poison, if you have it?"

There was no answer, of course. Brolly knew the lizards couldn't talk, but he sure hoped they could listen. "Right. You can't solve all my problems." Turning away from the map, he nodded to a runner. "Get me ten of our best marksmen and the ten people they trust to reload their guns."

It didn't take long for the twenty guards to climb to the top of his tower. Equal parts men and women, he certainly wasn't going to discriminate. "Your targets are two officers. They're wearing adamantine armor and their helmets have tight vision slits; vertical and horizontal. If you can get them both, great. If you can only get one, it's still good. We need to blunt their attack now that this has become street-by-street fighting. They were last seen near the southern breach nearest here.

"The first to nail one gets my rifle." Brolly lifted his gun from his back. It was sinfully lightweight for what it could do. "And I'm fairly sure Travis will make one for whoever gets the second one. You can have as much ammunition as you think you'll need. Please hurry, and good hunting."

Sketching a salute to Brolly, Anichka turned to her friend and smirked. "Come on, sis, we have a job." Her pale skin and human features didn't quite match those of the common ethnicity in the city.

A job was what Anichka had called any work or task they'd been hired to do since they'd first come to the kingdom ten years previous. Shouldering the two spare rifles, Tammy nodded to her friend, her vulpine features betraying her excitement. "Yeah, yeah. I was starting to like this place. No sense in letting these bastards stink it all up."

"Tam, you've gone soft on me. Warm baths and cozy beds. What next, you'll find yourself some girl with soft hands to keep it warm for you?" The rifle strapped to Anichka's back was loaded with only a little oiled leather covering the open barrel.

Taking the stairs at a jog, Tammy barked a laugh. "Come on, Annie, you know I prefer rough-and-tumble more than demure-and-soft." The cool air outside, as the day started to chill toward evening, made Tammy wish for a soft bed. "What about targets of opportunity?"

"No. We have two targets. Once those are down, we shift position and look for more—but not until they're face down and bleeding on my fair city."

"Your city?"

Reaching one gloved hand out to run along the crenelations as they jogged down the length of the wall, Anichka nodded. "I've lived in a lot of cities, Tam. None felt like this. No city is worth dying for, but for this one I'd kill."

"Have killed, Annie. Don't think for a second I don't remember every time I passed you a loaded rifle." The ones on Tammy's back were, like Anichka's, loaded and ready. "So two soldiers in heavy armor with cross-patterned helmets? And they were not far from here."

"Just two! How hard can it be?"

"Don't you dare say that. Come on, we're getting off the wall. Not like we can cross the breach anyway."

Nodding to that, Tammy searched among the houses nearest the next ramp down from the wall for any clues as to how to move on from there. "Rooftops?" she asked.

"Nah. Rooftops only work when we want to hide from people below—which we do—but I bet they'll start putting archers on the wall looking back into the city. Better to use the streets and houses." Anichka took the ramp down to the city streets and felt her alertness going into overdrive. She looked around the deserted streets, thankful at least that the townsfolk had been taken to safety. "Down here. Let's get some muck on our skin so we don't stand out as much."

When they reached the ground, they headed for the nearest building, a house, and entered. Inside it looked like the owners of the home had literally stood up and walked out, leaving a meal halfway through preparation. The only thing indicating that people weren't about to come downstairs from the bedrooms above was the chairs tipped over.

Ignoring the inside of the house, they made their way out the rear door and into the alley beyond. Without a word, Anichka started looking for the mud they'd need while Tammy kept watch. After the right muck—neither too odorous nor dry—they each ensured the other had every bit of exposed skin or fur painted with the stuff. Giving each other a knowing smile, they left the confines of the alley, moving fast across the street to its opposite.

It was slower going, and they had to pause more than once while Balavian troops moved down the streets only to see them engage with a squad of guards. They spent nearly an hour moving in this manner, maintaining the silence between them, before they came to what Anichka had assumed was the enemies' main target.

They slowed further as they reached the edge of Northridge's Bulge, as the addition of two dungeons to the city had been called. A quick look around revealed Balavian troops keeping to cover while a kobold that looked like it was made of adamantine and a centaur fired rifles at them again and again.

In the softest of voices, Anichka whispered, "I like this game. Nice distraction and loud noises. Let's work around to the shadow of the wall over there."

Tammy nodded and planned out a path to move from house to house. She'd tucked her tail into her pants leg, even if it could be covered in mud—it was a dead give away in silhouette that she wasn't one of the northerners. So, from shadow to shadow, they spent nearly ten minutes moving three houses to the shadow of the wall.

Any noise they might have made was covered by the repeating reports of gunfire from the two dungeon monsters, so all they had to worry about was being seen. Finding an upstairs bedroom, Anichka nodded to Tammy. "Here," she said.

They worked together quickly. Tammy checked over the guns, making sure each was ready to fire and fire true. Anichka focused on getting the room itself how she wanted it. She'd spent a lot of time thinking about firing from cover, and avoiding being seen, and pushed a dresser up to just-shy of a windowsill, before easing the window open.

With a clear view of the open area before the two dungeons—and at what Anichka estimated at a hundred and twenty degree angle from the kobold and centaur, she drew up a chair and balanced the first rifle Tammy passed her so the barrel was inside the window by half a foot. "Do I know how to call 'em?"

Tammy looked out the window, keeping herself well back from the glass and sill, and saw a bunch of the Balavian troops with shields approaching the dungeons. Just behind the shield line was a pair of uniquely armored sorts with dull gray armor and cross-slit helmets. When she drew back from the window, she had a big smile for her friend. "Both targets sighted."

"I want both those rifles, Tam." Slowing her breathing, Anichka sighted down the rifle. She'd clamped on little hooks of metal and painted a few dots on them. "How's the air?"

"Still here, but I can see a clothesline on the other side of them that is drifting to the right."

"Got it." Instinct and practice gelled together to tell her how much she needed to allow for wind. They weren't at her maximum range, but they were far enough that her carefully polished ball of steel would curve.

Listening to the steady rhythm of the two rifles firing, she picked out the timing of each and, when the kobold was due to fire, she picked a target out of sight of her targets and gently drew back the trigger.

The room itself absorbed a lot of the noise. The glass window shook but Anichka's earlier work with the curtains ensured they didn't so much as twitch. The round traveled and hit the dirt behind the dragon dungeon with a noticeable puff of dust. It was a little left and down of where she'd intended.

Tammy was swift, her hands sure as she set the first rifle back on the bed and fetched the second and set it into Anichka's grip. Now wasn't the time to dawdle—she started to ram the brush down the spent gun, cleaning it out before the process of loading it began.

No one had noticed her shot, Anichka surmised, given all the soldiers were still fixated on the kobold and centaur. She watched as a volley of arrows flew toward the pair, only for the kobold to release her rifle to its sling and lift a shield before the centaur.

The centaur, too, swapped their tactics and started firing a bow while the kobold covered them. Anichka silently cheered them on while she sighted down on one of the commanders.

When the moment was right, and with no sound to cover her shot this time, Anichka fired again. In her head she measured the flight of the ball. She knew how the wind would pull it, lift it, jostle it. When she was sure it was about to land—one of the commanders fell over. "Next gun, fast."

By the time Tammy got the gun in her hands, though, the second commander had turned away from them. Anichka cursed under her breath and waited for another opportunity.

Fife hadn't expected what had to be a one-in-a-million shot to cause the splash of blood from the helmet. She stared open-mouthed for a moment, expecting the northerners to find the shooter but, to her own surprise, even she couldn't figure out where it'd come from. "Did you see that?"

"Someone out there is very good with their gun." Huntress knew roughly what arc the shooter was in, but she deliberately didn't look that way—instinct making her not draw attention to their unseen ally. "They're pulling back."

"No they're not," Fife said as the remaining commander screamed a blood-curdling battlecry. "Get ready; I think they're angry."

Seeing her sister felled by an unseen foe shook Hilda to her core. Donna lay on the filthy stones, spilling her fine blood without having drawn her sword. It struck her how much her own threats and curses had meant nothing—a game at most—but another daring to deliver her such a dishonorable death was too much.

With her sword out, and her sister's sword in her offhand, Hilda turned to the two dungeon monsters—the only foes she could see—and let a berserker rage turn her world blood red.

Removing her rifle completely, Fife tossed it behind her and picked up her shield. "Breath, keep me standing. I have a bad feeling they're going to be a bitch to kill."

From behind Breath of Spring, vines and grass spread to the very ground under Fife's feet. Living energy rushed up and into the kobold to channel the very might of the dungeon itself into this unlikely champion. Breath of Spring let her own magic flow with that of her home, strengthening and fortifying Fife beyond even the dragon dungeon's gifts.

Lifting her shield to meet the first strike from the maddened fighter, Fife used the momentum of her body to shove back. As the commander snarled at her through the vision slits in her helmet, Fife parried the off-hand blade and struck for the gut—

Only Fife's weapon clanged off the adamantine.

Everything was red, but the kobold before her was the only thing that mattered to Hilda. She clashed her weapons on Fife's shield again and again, always surprised at the speed and strength of her foe. It was, at least to the tiny part of her still rational, a beautiful dance. They were both clad in similar armor, had their choice of weapons that were the best non-magical materials available, and both had skill and stamina to perpetuate the fight.

If it weren't for the fact Hilda was wielding adamantine swords herself, she would never have inflicted a single wound on the kobold. As it was, moments after each glancing blow scored across Fife's scales, bubbling life magic restored the metallic flesh to pristine condition. Being impregnated with adamantine as it was, it also left its mark on each of Hilda's swords.

The fight continued, neither of them giving ground nor taking any for more than a moment. Fife used her shield to gain brief moments of reprieve from the relentless Hilda, while Hilda continued to pummel Fife with blows that should have killed her many times over.

Hilda recognized, though, that while she was starting to feel the strain of her furious assault, every action Fife took was as efficient as it was deadly if she didn't react to it correctly. The thing that Hilda admired most, though, was the kobold fought her without a helm. While she'd tried to take the creature's head off, each time it had lowered its adamantine-scaled brow and battered her blade aside as if its head was a shield.

The first time it had happened, Hilda had written it off to some kind of profane ability, but each time she struck the kobold's head, she heard the distinctive sound of adamantine on adamantine. The realization that she'd met a foe she couldn't simply cut down sank in and drew her back from the edge of madness.

Fife was surprised when Hilda stepped back. The eyes looking at her from the helmet still held hatred, but also respect. "What's the matter? Don't you want to find out which of us is stronger?"

Hilda spat through the bottom part of her helmet's vision slit. She couldn't understand the words, but she knew what typical post-combat bad-mouthing was when she heard it. For now, though, she had over ten thousand soldiers who had just found the prize they'd been promised to be a hollow shell. After the long fight through the city—and finding every house, workshop, and store empty along the way—she didn't hold any hope for their sacking turning up anything valuable. "I don't know what you did, but you have soured this raid. I'll leave your twice-damned city and its pits to their own cursed marriage."

Turning, Hilda kept her head tilted forward and raised an adamantine-clad hand to her brow to shield her from further precise shots. Her troops had followed her order to fall back, so it was a miserable walk back across open ground to the cover of the houses, dragging the body of her sister all the way. "We're leaving. These heretics deserve this cursed place."

"Are they going away?" Huntress asked.

"Well, they're pulling back. That's a good thing." What angered Fife, though, was Hilda hadn't fought to the death. She'd expected a great brawl—even needing to use her many healing abilities—but the commander had shed her rage and left. "That was some nice armor she had."

"Do you know who fired that shot?"

"No idea. Hey, Breath of Spring, I think we're safe now." Crouching down, Fife reached out a hand and pulled the dryad into a hug while one eye was kept on the entrance and city beyond. "Thanks for the healing."

"You're going now?" Breath of Spring asked Fife, her voice betraying worry.

"Nope. Trav's got a pile of kobolds with guns, traps, and so many explosives he might even kill the whole army if they were stupid enough to delve him again. You only have Huntress and me. I'll stay here until I get the all-clear that they've all been sent packing." Fife stopped crushing Breath of Spring to her, but still kept herself between her friend and the open dungeon entrance.

No matter how fast they moved, Anichka and Tammy couldn't keep pace with the soldiers pulling back from the dungeons' entrances, and once they were behind there was no hope of getting a shot at the front of the commander's face.

"We got one. That's a freakin' mithril rifle, Annie. Forget gold, if we sold it, we'd—" Tammy stopped when her friend froze in place. "Look, I know you'd never sell it, but it could get enough for us to live comfortably for the rest of our lives."

"I know, Tam. I know. They didn't find us and we got the shot. Let's head back to the barracks and give them the good news." Putting her arm around Tammy, Anichka gave her friend a good half-hug before they set off at a more sedate pace.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.