Cataphractoi

  Instead of expining over the intercom, Vivi sprinted down the hall to meet up with the rest of the party. When she reached them she was so exhausted she could barely breathe and it took her a few moments to catch her breath.

  “You know you didn’t have to come all the way here for this, right?” Sera asked as she held Vivi up by the shoulder.

  “I sort of did, though…since I’m the only one that knows how to activate the barrier,” the cleric revealed while straightening up.

  “Couldn’t you have just told us how?” Tiriana pointed out. Vivi shook her head.

  “You can’t read the dispys and I can’t channel a transtion miracle from so far away,” she replied.

  “What about the engineers? Aren’t they the ones that figured it out?” Rinnie inquired while attempting to extract her arrow from the nachzehrer officer’s hip.

  “They told me how, but they’re too scared to leave the core. I had a hard enough time convincing them to resume the repairs after the first attack. Is it really the time for this? We need to get going!” Vivi insisted, ruffling her hair in exasperation.

  “Okay, okay,” Tiriana accepted with a sigh. “Rinnie, Lay, was there any fighting on the surface when you passed through?”

  “Just Isidro. He’d picked off a couple leapers but was still hunting one or two, I think. The Aegis Company adventurers were just starting to file in through the tunnels and the nachzehrer should still be marching towards us,” Rinnie expined. “If we’re heading out we should go now, before things get crazy.”

  “Hold on, what about the secondary core? Just because it’s active doesn’t mean we can leave it unguarded,” Sera objected. Currently they only had two people in fighting condition; leaving with them both would be irresponsible.

  “I will remain,” Lay volunteered, taking up a position at the end of the hallway that would force any attackers to first make it through all the traps before fighting her. She pnted her pronged hammer upright in the floor using the spiked butt, then crossed her arms. “Should more foes come, they will find only destruction and despair awaiting them.

  “Sometimes she says things that make me wonder if she’s the big bad…” Sera whispered to herself.

  “What?” Tiriana asked, having barely heard Sera speak.

  “Nothing!” Sera squeaked. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

  “Don’t know when the big dy became the noble, self-sacrificing type, but I think we can leave this to her. Let’s get moving,” Rinnie agreed, beckoning the others to follow as she left.

  “It is only a sacrifice if I believe my enemies have the power to overcome me,” Lay asserted confidently to Rinnie’s back. The dryad scout just waved over her shoulder to acknowledge she’d heard. Gncing at Tiriana and Vivi, Sera started walking for the elevator too.

  “Should we even be coming along?” Sera asked Tiriana as they stepped onto the elevator. “We’re both pretty spent.”

  “If nothing else, we’re two more bodies for the nachzehrer to target instead of Vivi,” the eleven mage answered grimly.

  “I’d really prefer if it didn’t come to that…” Vivi muttered sullenly.

  When the elevator reached the surface the four of them rushed out, with Tiriana and Sera mounting up on their usual flokkas. Vivi hopped on Soswa behind Tiriana, but when Sera looked at Rinnie, the scout shook her head.

  “Better if I keep both hands on my bow,” she expined as they headed for the settlement, Rinnie easily keeping pace with the flokkas.

  “Should we go straight through or loop around?” Tiriana asked Rinnie as they neared the edge of town.

  “Straight is faster. I think any surviving leapers are a little too busy being hunted by Isidro to bother us,” Rinnie suggested, watching their surroundings intently. Tiriana spurred Soswa onward, accepting Rinnie’s judgement. The main street wasn’t especially long, even at the slower speed flokkas moved at when compared to horses, so they would only be in danger for a short time anyway.

  While passing through Sera only saw a living leaper once, and it had barely nded before it was forced to dodge an arrow fired from somewhere out of sight. Halfway down the street another leaper y dead, one of its hands pinned to its face by an arrow. Having seen a leaper catch one of Rinnie’s arrows and throw it back, it was almost surreal to see another killed with the same weapon, but that was the difference between Rinnie’s short bow and Isidro’s longbow.

  In less than a minute the party passed through the expedition’s settlement and into the open fields. Panning her gaze, Sera saw adventurers rushing about near the entrances to the underground making their preparations to fend off the attacking nachzehrer. She wondered momentarily if Broviss was safe, but there was nothing she could do for the agoraphobic smith right now but assume Rinnie and Lay had seen to it that he wasn’t in danger.

  Multiple cracks like thunder shook the air when Sera’s group was halfway to the ruined town at the center of the fortress. If she’d been inclined to forget the battle was only in a lull, not over, that would have been a sufficient reminder. No doubt Cadenza had just done something about the second nachzehrer company’s artillery support; hopefully she would manage to retreat before the nachzehrer retaliated.

  Advancing through the rubble of the colpsed town was surprisingly peaceful, which Sera chalked up to the fact that there really wasn’t anywhere to stage an ambush. Even if the nachzehrer had been inclined to post troops near the control room to keep anyone from accessing it, just in case, the even distribution of the ruins meant there were no pce to hide. No alleys, no corners, and no semi-intact walls- just a sea of colpsed masonry. There were occasional gaps where survivors or bodies had presumably been excavated, but none were situated conveniently along the road.

  Finally they arrived at the central keep and dismounted. Rinnie entered the narrow courtyard first, quickly checking both sides after passing through the gate before waving the others in. Halfway to the door, though, Sera heard a crunch. Instinctively she dove for Vivi, tackling the smaller woman to the ground.

  If she’d thought it through logically she would have realized the nachzehrer had no reason to target the cleric first, not knowing she was essential to the group’s success. Indeed, it was actually Rinnie that fell under attack, but the noise had been enough to alert her and she easily evaded. Drawn into melee she was forced to discard her bow and grab her misericord.

  Sera reached for her hammer and urged Vivi onward as Rinnie lured the leaper she was fighting out of the way. Less than half the height of a nachzehrer as the dryad was, her opponent seemed to be having trouble targeting her as she danced in and out of its range, striking at its weak points. But it wasn’t the only threat, as Sera found out a moment ter.

  “Look out!” Tiriana shouted. Possibly having picked up on how quickly Sera moved to defend the cleric, a second leaper chose to attack Vivi instead of the others, barely missing when Tiriana yanked her out of the way. Sera lunged forward several steps to catch up with the two of them, looking around for the leaper.

  Even she didn’t know how she did it, but by the time she realized the leaper was making another attempt, Sera had already raised her hammer to block the strike. It was small, thin. Just your everyday cw hammer used for driving nails. But it was also a single piece of heat-treated steel, solid all the way through. The nachzehrer leaper that swung its wrist bde at Sera as she stood protectively in front of Vivi was nearly ten feet tall with strength to match, all of which it threw into cutting Sera apart.

  A cw hammer wasn’t going to stop that ssh, but it could slow it down. In the time it took the leaper’s sword to cleave apart the hammer from head to handle, it lost enough force to grievously wound Sera instead of outright sying her on the spot. She didn’t even feel the injury when it happened, she only saw her own blood scattering. Stumbling backwards, she looked down to find her hands in ruins and a crimson line stretching across her chest from her colrbone through her right breast.

  Someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her away as endorphins flooded Sera’s system and left her more high than pained. Rinnie jumped between the door to the keep and the nachzehrer as Sera was pulled through, initiating a blinding series of sshes that kept both leapers at bay.

  “Go! I’ll hold them here!” Rinnie yelled as she seemed to accelerate even more, her attacks becoming practically invisible with her fully on the offensive.

  “You can’t kill two leapers at once!” Tiriana argued from somewhere close to Sera’s ear.

  “Maybe not. But I can stalemate them. Get the barrier activated! If these guys could use the controls they’d have done it!” Rinnie insisted. Sera’s view spun as Tiriana turned and ran deeper into the keep after Vivi, who was already running up the stairs. Sera had no idea how Tiriana managed to ascend the steps while carrying her- adrenaline, maybe- but she could barely even process the passage of time right now, so it was as if she blinked and then found herself in the control room.

  Maybe she had. She’d lost a lot of blood.

  Out of the corner of her eye Sera saw Vivi check several consoles before settling on one and beginning to interact with it. Unlike the st time she’d been here the control stations were all lit up, with holographic interfaces floating above them in spaces that had seemed curiously bnk before. She looked back to Tiriana after feeling several sps on her cheek.

  “Still with me? I promise it looks worse than it is,” the elf assured her as she did something to Sera’s wrists. Slowly she managed to tilt her head down to see what was happening. There was blood all over Tiriana, none of which was hers, as she tied strips of Sera’s ruined tunic around her wrists tightly in the closest approximation of a tourniquet she could manage.

  “I think I need a new tit,” Sera giggled deliriously, as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever said.

  “Well, at least your sense of humor hasn’t gotten any worse,” Tiriana noted while rolling her eyes. “Just stay alive a little longer and Vivi will get you stabilized, okay?”

  “Got it!” Vivi cheered as the entire room lit up, light spilling in through the narrow, arrowslit-esque windows. When everything was almost dyed white, the light receded back to its normal levels. “Pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to do that, but the barrier is stable.”

  “Are you done? I could use some help,” Tiriana asked, struggling to keep her voice even. Vivi rushed over and quickly checked Sera’s wounds before beginning to pray. The cut on her chest glowed for a few seconds, then Vivi hopped back to her feet.

  “That slowed the bleeding. It should buy me a few minutes,” Vivi informed Tiriana while she went back to the consoles, searching through them again.

  “I thought the barrier was already up!” Tiriana excimed, voice full of worry.

  “It is, but I noticed some movement on the lower floors- I think some nachzehrer got in already. I saw how the engineers disabled the traps near the secondary core, though, so if I can just find the right screen…” Vivi expined as she looked from screen to screen. “There!” she excimed suddenly, noticing something a couple rows down and making a beeline to a particur terminal.

  Sera passed out before Vivi was finished.