NOVEL NEXT Chapter Ninety-Six – The Ziggurat
Climbing the places in Nightmare...
A Raptor Tyrant, the equivalent of a tyrannosaur, came barreling down the overgrown street, scales bright red and yellow, with two slightly smaller ones in red-black and green-yellow behind him. Thundering on the scaled stones, ripping through stands of vines and ferns while bellowing out furiously, a thirty-foot lance in the hands of the muscled rider barely reached past its gaping jaws.
Impressive sight.
When the knights drove four lances into its side with a full charge and the perfect timing that only comes with Marks and multiple eyes, smashing the big lizard off its feet, that was impressive, too.
It caromed into the corner of a building in shock and pain, bellow cut off half-way as the rider went flying, and a really big lizard skidded down the stones with four glowing Lances buried very deep into it.
With excellent horsemanship, the knights avoided the tail of the Tyrant, and managed to get through the intersection. Naturally, this received the attention of the other two Raptors, who skidded and turned to follow the motion, just like natural predators should.
The second wave of eight knights, and the third of eight more, hit them from behind.
The first rider was punched right out of his seat from both sides, and multiple Lances drove in behind the ribs, while two each were allocated to the legs. Red-black buckled and was driven off its clawed feet, its great head smashed into by armored heavy horses and not quite able to bring its jaws into play before they were out of range.
Green-yellow received the same treatment, except the last pair of knights held back until it chose a direction to lunge out with a bite, presenting a perfect side target to its head. Eighteen feet of Lance, eighteen inches of steel, backed by a ton of man, mount and steel, drove through its neck and up into its small brain, and Sir Chevy roared his success as the beast roared and jerked away, ripping the Lance from his hand.
Three writhing Tyrants were now occupying the square, dying where they were, and rather messing up the advance of the saurian cavalry that was racing in behind them.
Ahead of them, the lines of spears drove forwards, trampling over the serpentmen with mass and momentum, letting the swordsmen behind hack those still living apart as they rushed up to meet those raptors weaving through the falling Tyrants… and trying to get to the knights down that side street.
A line of scalefolk archers showed up on the roof tops, just in time to be scythed down by the archers waiting behind for them to show.
I hopped between rooftops and fallen columns, the brooding heights of vine-covered trees, and the fallen heights of ancient statues crumbling in the grip of ages.
Right behind me, Esco kept up a constant stream of fire, holding Fall in two hands and his finger tight on the trigger as he moved from one target to the next, trying to control his frantic enthusiasm as Tremble Sang and glowing bolts of force shot out into his targets endlessly.
Autobows are damn addictive to ranged attack types.
Shardings flew this way and that, cutting down snipers, rock and spear hurlers, and any Caster unlucky enough to get that close to me. I had a select group of archers just waiting for me to point out targets, and occasionally murderously accurate volleys would saturate an area and send scaled bodies writhing to the ground.
A couple spells slammed into me, lightning and fire, and faded into emptiness, leaving nothing behind to threaten Esco. There was a massive arc of arrow fire at us, but I outran most of it, and Stand dealt with the rest lazily, spinning up to send them down wide of the two of us without missing a beat.
Our lines pushed out into the plaza where their final defense was lining up. They tried to stop us from advancing, rushing up to do the canyon defense thing, while other forces came out of tunnels all around us, trying to take us from all sides.
Sudden pullbacks disrupted their lines, overeager charges became quick deaths on ready spears, which immediately surged back for more into the ragged press left behind. The savage devolved serpentmen couldn’t get the hang of resisting the rush, overcome with bloodlust, and we coolly used it against them as we advanced.
Reinforced lines of spears and shields warded both advance paths, and were kept coolly updated as lines of scaled bodies scampered out of sewers, tunnels, abandoned buildings… and had to pass through gauntlets of horse archers shooting over those spears to get to grips with us. If the streets between were clear, then a cavalry charge would slam into them and sweep it clear repeatedly, until the heaped bodies made them realize it just wasn’t working.
They packed a mass of warriors into Avenue One, so I decided that dropping into the middle of them would be fine, sending Esco spinning off towards our lines as I killed two of them with Shardings, dropped down on the bodies held up by the press of scales, and as the serpentmen stared up at me standing on their shoulders, I began to split their narrow, fanged heads.
I was pitiless and merciless, harvesting brains with grim absolution, racing up and down the length of them, spinning and scything, one moment almost horizontal as I split them from above, then spinning vertically as necks came loose from bodies all around me.
Longspears plunged in and impaled with murderous, inspired accuracy, shoving the serpentfolk back, back, back as I remorselessly cleaned out their rear lines, and even the fearless reptile-men paused as I swept through swathes of them, untouched, unmarked, and devastating numbers of their kin died right in front of them.
Arrows came in, shields came up to take them. Not even able to see them, our archers replied in kind, out of their range, and began to reap them as I spotted for them. Tortoise’d up, the spears continued to advance over the burning bodies of the dead as the thinning arrow fire rattled down on them.
I saw the armored biceratops coming in at a trot. It was the size of an elephant, with a howdah of spears and archers on its back, the first of six of them. Without hesitation, I drove into a wall of their biggest fighters, ripping my way through before they could part way, and slashed my way out past them.
I picked up speed very quickly as the dinos lumbered towards me. I avoided the snapping bite, ignoring the falling javelins and arrows as useless as I flattened to the ground, spinning around and scything Tremble across the back of the right front leg, sliding right underneath the first one, the ground acting just like an ice rink, and hacking into the rear leg the same way as I came out from underneath it, avoiding the thick tail and closing on the next dino.
The frilled brute let out a bellow of pain as the two right legs folded, and it went down helplessly, spilling the howdah rather energetically as it did so.
The next one I fake-jumped; it raised its mouth, and I fell down right onto my back as it lumbered over me, Tremble jutting up and a +VIII edge hacking through a foot of fat and hide to open the mother of all eviscerations on the thing.
As I came out from underneath it, a gory mass of blood and organs was falling down behind me, and I simply latched onto the ground and with brute strength stood back up to face the next one, swaying left while moving right, completely avoiding its bite, and then running Tremble along its side. The straps of the howdah, along with the skinny leg of the mahout, were cut clean through, and both fell off the opposite side rather splendidly as the dinosaur balked at the sudden deluge of its herdmate’s blood and innards it was running into.
A bunch of magic fell onto me frantically, doing nothing but giving me Caster targets to send a Sharding scything into over there, there, and there. Swaying, inhumanly graceful serpentfolk converged on me to kill me, giving me more to kill as I made my way towards the biceratops heading towards Avenue Two to give us problems.
I was much faster than they were, and coming up from behind, they had no way to guard their legs except the other serpentfolk who wanted to get in my way, and just gave me more targets to hit.
With a Finish and Hew, I could take one of those thick legs right off, too. The last one crashed down less than twenty yards from the lines of my boys, spilling off its hapless mahout and howdah, and both flanks were now advancing into the plaza.
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Consolidating our position here involved precise formations, securing everything from all directions, and pressing forwards to clear up more area while holding off ever-more desperate serpentfolk, including more dino riders. When we finally opened up enough room to let the heavy cavalry come hammering forwards, the outcome was inevitable.
The archers harried the Raptor Riders, and the cavalry smashed them from their saddles almost with impunity. Without riders, the mounts ran from the violence and the plunging points ready to take them down, and the serpentfolk didn’t have a spear line solid enough to resist their charges, especially backed up by the lancers.
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“That it?” I asked Esco calmly, looking at the top of the structure before us.
Massive cobra-headed humanoid statues, kept carefully clean of vines, towered before the stairs of the ziggurat. Every facing block was carved with scales and serpentine faces, also kept clear of greenery. A set of steps worn by time and a lot of scaled feet led up to the summit, where more idols of things serpentine gilt in precious metal waited… and a swirling yellow cloud spun in place, visibly distorting space about it.
“Yes,” he nodded, as did all the hyn behind him.
Twenty levels to the thing, and the serpentfolk, guarded by large square shields, were waiting along each level. It was going to be a long climb, all the while we had to keep our back lines secure against the scalefolk creeping in from all directions in angry mobs.
Gaining the plaza had been a refresh moment, rejuvenating the men who had been fighting constantly for several hours now as we drove the path through to the temple-ziggurat.
Could I make it up there? Sure I could. But that wasn’t the goal, the goal was to get the hyn up there, and send them home… or at least out of Leng.
I had about three hundred dead at this point. The Healers were fixing up the wounded, sending them back into the fight. Soak came back slowly, but at least they were at full Health, and given how often they had died, that was at max possible. Although painful, the men were trained to take light injuries and get them mended by Healing Reserve if possible, stretching out their Soak.
Those who had died had been overcome by a combination of numbers and poison bites, mostly. The venom of the savage brutes was lethal and debilitating, and there naturally wasn’t enough anti-venom or healing, alchemical or magical, to deal with all of it.
However, we had harvested a lot of said venom to make more anti-venom on the morrow, dum de dum…
I ran through a lot of options in my head, especially regarding the cavalry, who would have great difficulty going up the stairs. Having them run around down below would get them a lot of kills among those loose mobs, but I was going to have to pay very close attention to their movements.
Likewise, moving up them stairs was going to involve a lot of attacks coming down from higher levels, and the snakes up at the top. Two hundred feet was a long way to go up against all that easy missile fire coming down, especially rocks and the like.
Of course, I was here, which meant I was going to throw a massive monkey wrench into these plans. I was sure my boys could get up there, but I would lose most of them in the process, and that was simply unwanted.
I gave my orders simply and concisely. The hyn were sheltered in the middle of the infantry formation near the base of the ziggurat, but beyond easy missile range, while the cavalry began to scour the plaza, refusing to be baited, and the horse archers were more than happy to pick off any taunters, especially those swinging bolas and nets or the like.
As for me, I ran straight up the damn thing, to the utter astonishment of the serpentfolk.