I barely registered the sensation before the mana pulled me, with the aranae woman still lodged on my chest, away from the battle. Stone caught against my armor and pushed down by the woman on top of me dug grooves through the flesh of my back.

  Right as all reason left me and I was about to slip into unconsciousness, the woman lifted from my chest and I sucked in a ragged, desperate gasp.

  My eyesight came back into focus and I could see above me was a three headed scholar. Rather than the ageless youthfulness I’d seen of every other aranae in the first watershed, this woman was old. Her faces crossed with scars and filled with wrinkles and laugh lines.

  Unless the society they existed in was particularly kind, people rarely grew as old as this woman presented without extreme power. Which was why she caught me off guard. I hadn’t realized anyone above the first watershed would take part in this battle. Even just the third tier would push the rules of war as I knew them.

  The woman did little for me besides lifting the warrior from my chest. Once freed, she handed me off to a younger [Healer] who, after a quick once over, poked my ribs and the fresh cuts in my back before she gave me the all clear to return.

  ~~~***~~~

  The goblin in front of me died like all the rest. I’d fought now for close to eight hours and I was exhausted. Every fiber of every muscle burnt and screamed for me to rest, which through the frost of Iona’s touch told me I’d be in agony tomorrow morning. Every twitch of my eye or small shuffle was a mountain moved. I wasn’t the only one who was tired, either. An hour ago, I’d noticed the number of casualties amongst the aranae spiking.

  The increase started slowly, but as the casualties mounted, we died even faster and the lines behind us grew thinner. A formation once five lines deep was now only three at its deepest. They hit our section the hardest, and now Ellen and I made up the entirety of our line. The two of us changing places whenever a switch was called.

  Though the pressure was often relieved by Mika, who’d moved all of his golems over here once he’d noticed how badly our side fared.

  Not having thirty minutes of rest between turns at the front was brutal, and now because of the lack of numbers I spent the breaks covering gaps in the formation and blocking for Ellen, so she wasn’t overrun.

  Ellen shared my exhaustion and spent her rest periods beating back goblins I didn’t see and stepping up to cover for me when an attack or skill slipped past my notice. On the positive side, after a close call for Ellen when a goblin in the third row of attackers elongated their spear to almost take her in the neck, Maggie called for Mika and Nora to focus completely on protecting us, which made surviving what followed a lot easier.

  That was exactly what this battle had become for us, and even the entire aranae force. Surviving.

  Exhaustion a lead chain around my neck, conscious thought fell to the wayside. Movement and combat became things that happened rather than things I did. There was no decision to aim for an extended knee or exposed neck, there was just base instinct. The Touch of the Black hand kept me within its trance. Even as exhaustion weighed my body and mind down, Iona’s grip forced me upright. The reality of my pain and expenditure only surfaced when fresh steel split my flesh.

  Dimly. I noticed something happening near the entrances to the spires by the sound of a new cry. The incoherent screams of battle replaced with the stalwart commands of leadership. It was nothing that would have caught my attention usually, but once she heard the words, Helle finally joined the fighting.

  A hand gripped down onto my shoulder from above, clawlike nails present even though the armor, and ripped me back from the front just in time to avoid a sword thrust. On instinct, I spun. Metal cried as whoever had their hand on me maintained their grip and my armor tore. I punched down at the wrist that held me with my shield.

  A finely engraved buckler of bronze stopped the blow and the hand on my shoulder pushed me backward to join Ellen on the ground. Together, Ellen and I watched through a haze of fatigue as Helle and a dozen other aranae warriors filled the gap we’d held ourselves for hours.

  We laid there together, both of us soaked in sweat. Rivers of it coursed down Ellen’s face, two of which were tinted red from cuts on her scalp. Neither of us spoke, too focused on forcing the stale air of the Under Tunnels into our lungs until we heard Mika and Nora call for us.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Cold logic told me I needed to rise, that I wasn’t safe on the floor. It took every drop of effort I had to force acid-soaked muscles to even rise. Ellen moved slower than me and needed a hand to find her feet. We joined a trail of other aranae warriors who looked equally ragged in falling back to the center of the courtyard. Hundreds of people already gathered around the injured.

  Nora and Mika were easy to spot amongst the crowd, seated beside a standing Maggie. The small woman blocked whatever spells or projectiles landed near the pair. Mika hunched back over one of his golems as soon as he saw us stand. Chiseling into the golem shaped after a woman, the baker nowhere to be seen. His latest golem, the half-finished rough draft, sprawled out beside him, its legs missing.

  Nora looked the halest of the four of us. Her eyes rapidly scanned the crowd as she meditated beneath the monolith that was Maggie. The thought of sitting down to rest beside them was a river nymph’s song. I knew, however, that if I stopped moving, I wouldn’t be able to force myself to begin again. I was too exhausted, too injured. Concealed from my body’s condition as I was within the Touch, I could force myself to continue. But as soon as I stopped and my body got the chance to re-register what was going on, I doubted I could move without healing.

  With a glance to my left, I saw Ellen in a similar state to me. She looked half dead, eyes sunken, skin pale. I knew that if she stopped, she’d lock up, or pass out. Once we got to the group, Ellen tried to fling herself down beside Mika, eyes already half closed.

  I grabbed her arm before she could and hauled her back to her feet. She glared murder at me. I was too tired to defend myself with words, so I began a wooden set of stretches. Ready to grab her if she tried to stop again.

  “He’s right Ellen. Your work’s not done yet; it’ll be better for you if you keep moving.” Maggie chimed in and casually swatted a throwing knife from the sky.

  With a glare for Maggie, Ellen followed in my stretches, but Maggie held her off with a disarming smirk I wanted to laugh at.

  Peering up from a toe-touch, I saw the defense was not going well. The new shift of warriors that Helle was a part of was losing the wall, the spiress now taking a tactical retreat into the courtyard. Which explained why Maggie was even defending against potshots from the wall.

  Things were going better at the gate than up on the wall, but Helle and the other commanders slowly gave ground under the constant stream of goblins.

  Around us, scholars and laborers scrambled across the courtyard, small walls and ditches being shaped into existence. Each ditch was barely wide enough to stop a goblin from taking a step across, and the walls were just high enough to stop one from hopping over.

  As they worked, portions of the walls already created unmade themselves. The stones flowed like water and screamed like a kicked donkey as goblin [Clerics] fought against the aranae for control. The [Clerics] worked in small sections at a time, but soon after they’d finished unmaking the wall, it would reform as the aranae fought the stone back into place.

  I forced my attention back onto the gate, shunting the sound of screaming stone to the back of my mind. The aranae formations held, but they gave ground faster than command probably wanted from them. Unsurprising when you considered the assault had gone on for nearly twelve hours now. Everyone was tired.

  ~~~***~~~

  “Adventurers!” a scholar yelled, her gore-soaked faces speaking in unison. “Your casters are to retreat further and your fighters to rejoin the battle!”

  Ellen groaned and picked up her maul. The head barely cleared the ground as she plodded forward without a word. I joined her shortly, only taking the time to tighten my shield, not anymore talkative than her.

  Retreats are a delicate endeavor. They’re a glass scale you have to keep balanced between giving ground and killing as many people across from you as possible. In my experience it was always during the retreat when the most people died.

  We’d originally joined in the second line of the retreat, but when the warriors in front of us died to an earth spell that went between their heads and took half each on its way past, we took the front. Another thing I’ve learned during my sixteen years of life was how difficult a profession combat is. A profession that only becomes more difficult when you're exhausted, have grey matter in your eyes, and have to be perfect.

  ~~~***~~~

  Ellen and I got lucky. Often the only thing to save our lives was the other person or, in a few miraculous cases, a stray strike of spell from the people beside us. To this day I consider it a gift from the Grace Mother that I survived those ten minutes, and an even greater gift from the Plane Heart we stood where we did.

  Because of the new walls and ditches, the retreat couldn’t just cross straight across the courtyard. Instead, the aranae established small footholds at the three bridges that crossed each ditch. Those holding the center of a foothold were the first to retreat past the wall. The people on the wings shuffled in to close the gap it created. Ellen and I, by a stroke of luck, were incredibly close to the center of the first foothold and only had to wait for three people to retreat before we made our own escape.

  This portion of the retreat cost us less in lives than getting to the walls had, but it still cost some. Even from my limited line of sight, I could see the courtyard littered with the corpses of aranae.

  The goblins didn’t follow us through the choke point, instead their officers called a halt. Two exhausted forces stood there for minutes, our support staff already in the process of retreating further as we waited. Everyone around me watched on as, from beyond the curled-up gate, they brought small bridges of stone forward. From the track marks on the underside of the bridges, I realized this was what the goblin used to cross the ditches in front of the fort.

  Teams positioned themselves to drop the bridges and waited. A voice called out from behind the idling mass of soldiers. Those at the front responded in kind by repeating the orders back. The call and response grew in volume until spittle flew as those at the front screamed their answers.

  The soldiers screamed their rage and exhaustion at us at the same time as the bridges dropped and charged. The bridges were almost a non-issue and easily pushed off the walls. However, they forced the warriors away from the fighting at the established bridges and exposed them to spell fire from [Clerics] still atop the wall. Ellen and I never reached the fighting at the bridges before the spiress had one of her commanders call out in the Trade Tongue for us specifically to retreat.

  The spiress left behind twenty warriors to hold the gap in between walls during the final retreat. A pattern she continued at each of the six remaining barriers and ditches. Fifty-three warriors in total left behind with a command to stall for time and hold the line. To my surprise, all fifty-three took the orders with Grace and not a single one balked at being told to give up their lives.

  As my feet took the stairs two at a time up to the top of the rear wall, I couldn’t help but wonder what the point of their sacrifice was. Surely the goblins would just continue their assault until they drove us from the fort. Why sacrifice so many people just for a few more hours of control?