The Willbreaker (Book 1) (43 page)

              The gaping seam shot apart, splitting and widening as the Templars and maidens on the battlefield poured over the edge into the glowing orange inferno below. Screams of horror and dismay flooded the air. The unworldly break grew and shifted, shaking and ripping through Reinhold’s army. The Templars toppled like dominos into the burning fissure. Men and women ran away from the growing crack together, temporarily forgetting of their allegiances. Panic and disorder spread across the entire battlefield.

              Suddenly, with one last shift of the ground, the fracture stopped. Dirt and a few hanging soldiers continued to fall to their deaths. Aurora crumpled to a knee. Her robes, soaked in sweat, felt heavy against her weakened muscles. The deep pool of her power pulsed but the density it held moments before had diluted.  She struggled to keep her eyes open. Princess and Flower jumped to help her, hooking their arms underneath hers and lifting her to her feet. As she rose, her hand weakly opened and the crumbled dust of the elephant fell into the wind.

              Gretchen Lomire stood to her feet after the tremors knocked her to the ground. Peering around, she saw her Queen. Her heart quickened as she thought of Aurora’s safety. She glanced across the battlefield and then put her pinkies into her mouth and whistled loudly. The Blade Maidens looked over as Gretchen whirled her hand in the air and then dropped it with a pointing finger towards Reinhold. The hundred-thousand reserve maidens sprinted in to action. Reinhold did not have enough forces to resist this attack.

              Cedric stood to his feet, brushed off his armor and held the Heart of the King. He did not believe what he saw. The battlefield, split in two as if a giant knife carved into the earth, caused him to lose hope. The powerful Templar army that fought here minutes before had vanished. Scattered groups of elves gathered and fought off Blade Maidens, but their numbers were no longer even. Clusters of thirty and forty women ganged on the much smaller groups of Templars, slaying them in seconds. All around the battlefield, his army fell to Aurora’s troops.

              Reinhold held the Heart of the King to the sky and yelled at the top of his lungs.

              “Wild men of the Mountains! Horsemen of the Sand! Attack! Attack! Attack!” He screamed repeatedly.

              As the Blade Maidens charged onto the battlefield, the primal hollers of the wild men and the deep barking of their attack hounds came from the trees to the east, and the clopping of hooves came from the west as the hooded nomads burst from the woods. They spilled onto the battlefield, seventy-five thousand warriors and Gifted. They were rested, eager, and ready to earn their places in this final battle.

              The ground trembled from the stampede of horses and men that charged into the battlefield. Princess and Flower carried Aurora away from the violence toward the gates, her feet dragging along the ground from exhaustion. The posted guards moved hastily out of the Lash Lord’s way, snapping to attention as they entered the massive iron gates. Princess locked eyes with the tower commander. His voice, deep and full, gathered the attention of everyone around them.

              “Keep Reinhold’s men out of here. If your sensors pick up any trouble, send someone to get me immediately.”

              The tower commander looked around nervously as she fumbled with her hands.

              “Milord, I am sorry, the sensors magic is not working properly. Their sensing abilities are hazy… something about a little girl’s face.”

              Aurora’s head rose as she whispered, “The Beacon…”

              “Damn it!“ Princess yelled out angrily as he continued inside the city with Flower and Aurora.

              Arkam and his Ice Lancers hid in the alleyways, pressed up against the walls as a small brigade of Blade Maidens ran by. The lack of sensors around the castle walls made their journey inside easier than anticipated. The streets of Orlimay, empty of guards and maidens, were still dangerous to the Ice Lancers. Arkam poked his head out to look down the street and then withdrew it quickly.

              “All clear, move.”

              Arkam sprinted across the street, keeping his body crouched to the ground, followed by six of his companions. Four of the other Ice Lancers wore large black backpacks covered in black cloth and shaped like a thirty-gallon wine keg. The weight of the objects made it difficult for the carriers to move quickly, but they had their orders. Arkam dropped his pack off twenty minutes earlier.

              “Time is wasting, move! We cannot fail!”

              The mass of horsemen riding from the west, all cowled and armed with crossbows, set loose a volley of poisoned crossbow bolts into the group of maidens that moved across the battlefield towards Reinhold. The rattling of fired crossbows ceased as the wall of toxic-tipped rods shot in an arch and rained down upon the women. As the bolts connected, sounding like hail falling upon a tin roof, the women screamed and fell trying to avoid them. One of the bolts found home in the neck of a running maiden. Two inches of the six-inch long bolt protruded from the wound. Her hand flew upward to cover the wound as she fell. Instantly, the skin surrounding the wound turned black and a soupy green froth bubbled and hissed from the cavity. The pitch of her voice shot upward as she thrashed and convulsed on the ground.

              Women dropped across the plains, skin burning and blackening, as their veins turned the color of oil and their eyes filled with blood. Another volley of bolts shot over the heads of the thirteen members of the nomads leading the group. The Hermetic Order of Helios slowed their horses to a stop as the rest of the riders charged towards the army of dying women ahead of them.

              Calmly, and with purpose, Ess and the twelve other lizard men leaders formed a semi-circle, like a crescent moon, facing the Blade Maidens. They stood still only a moment before their bodies twisted into contorted and odd shapes all in unison. Arms bent awkwardly over their heads, legs split and knotted in unstable positions, and mouths open revealing their serpent-like teeth. They hissed and shrieked in a bone-chilling tone.

              The maidens in the middle of the army slowed and stared at the ground as the grass melted away underneath their feet, progressively turning black, brown and then beige. As the color of the ground lightened, the strands of grass fell like ash as it turned into sand. Within seconds, the patch of ground in the center of the battlefield, about a hundred feet wide, turned into the sand of the desert. The maidens fled away from it in distress.

              A quick, ground-shaking rumble and the sand exploded upward like a geyser. A colossal sandworm, the exposed part of its body sticking eighty feet out of the ground, smashed thousands of Blade Maidens as it writhed and roared. The sandworm had no eyes, but the tip of the worm housed its mouth, a deep hollowed hole that lead to its stomach, lined with a fearsome array of large pointed teeth.

              The sounds of battle went unnoticed over the wails and booming grumbles of the gigantic monster. The worm swept its head around the battlefield, sucking up Aurora’s women like sugar through a straw. The Blade Maidens lined up in defensive rows in attempt to shield themselves from the destructive beast, but the sheer size of the monster made defense impossible. Another torrent of poisonous bolts showered upon the defending women.

              Sandy patches sprouted in random fashion around the battlefield. Thick-armored scorpions, larger than trade wagons and blacker than pitch, burst forth from within the sand, snapping and attacking the Blade Maidens. Their horrific black pincers clamped cleanly through shields and armor, separating bodies and dismembering figures. The long curved stingers at their tails lashed out in a blur, piercing plate mail and destroying rough defenses.

              The battlefield became a show of monsters and their prey. The Blade Maidens grouped in small clusters around the battlefield. They attacked in formation, pressing their bodies together and focusing their assaults on any single targets. As the sandworm thrashed and crushed the main assemblies of Blade Maidens, two smaller groups focused their attention and killed two of the large scorpions.  The battle stormed in every corner of the battlefield, fierce and true.

              Rage, the largest and most aggressive of the attack dogs, pulled hard at the chain that wrapped around Hronlin’s wrist. The wall of wild men moved forward from the trees, resisting the strength and drive of their driving beasts. The dogs dug their thick paws into the ground, pressing hard against the earth with their muscled haunches, barking and biting in anticipation for the upcoming attack.

              The wild men yelled out commands, jerking the chains backwards and holding the dogs at bay. Hronlin held up his free hand, commanding his men to ease their advancement. Up ahead of them, something happened in the battlefield that caused the advancing maidens to break their formations and split apart.

              The ground rumbled as a super-sized sandworm burst from the ground, smashing and swallowing up the armored women ahead. Hronlin could see across the field as the allied lizard men summoned the monstrous beast. Moments after, large black scorpions appeared scattered within the fleeing women, causing more death and destruction.

              The Blade Maidens grouped back towards the capital city and outward away from the monsters of the sand. Numerous assemblies of the escaping maidens turned towards Hronlin. With another primal yell, the wild men released their hounds.

              The hounds shot forward, churning up the ground as they ran, barking and howling. As the maiden’s path turned into a collision with the ravenous and hungry attack dogs, the women became aware of a new level of terror.

              The momentum and power of the four-hundred pound attack animals toppled the defenses of the maidens. The dogs leapt into the air, drooling mouths open wide and lips snarled, as they smashed into the women. Wide, powerful jaws locked around heads, arms, and bodies. Broad paws, tipped with curled claws, batted women like childhood dolls.

              Rage leapt into the air from a full run at a Blade Maiden in the front line, lips curled back revealing a mouthful of stained yellow teeth. Rage tilted his head sideways, catching the women’s head within his mouth as the force of his leap pulled her violently to the ground. Rage clamped his jaws closed, brutally whipping his head left and right in a shaking motion. Her body thrashed and twisted within in his jaws, tendons and muscles struggling against the power to keep together. Sounding like tearing cloth, the maiden’s head ripped from her body, flinging blood in all directions as Rage shook his head wildly.

The dogs mauled and mangled the women as the wild men entered the battle with weapons high. Hronlin gripped his two-handed battle-axe tightly, putting full power behind his swings. The axe, weighing nearly forty pounds, carried momentum that smashed through the polearms of the defending Blade Maidens. Their polearms snapped under the power of his axe, leaving faces, chests, and arms open for the continued advance of the overpowering weapon of destruction.

              In Hronlin’s world, women were subordinate to men. Men provide food and protection, while the women cook and tended to the children. Hronlin’s disregard for women superiority showed in battle. He fought the maidens as if they were children wielding wooden spoons, with no concern or worry, and they fell beneath him as such. The women piled up all around the wild men and their hounds, whose primal savagery dominated the more elegant fighting practices of the Blade Maidens. The women did not know how to fight those who had no style or predictable fighting practices.

              The battlefield was now a scarred and bloody field of the dead, thinned of Aurora’s forces. Lord Cedric Reinhold watched over the battlefield with the Heart of the King at his side. The battlefield, covered on the left side by the Horsemen of the Sand, and the wild men of the mountains his right, moved in dominating waves. In the middle of the battlefield, the sandworm thrashed and writhed, tearing up the soil as the desert scorpions skittered around, picking apart the remaining groups of gathered Blade Maidens.

              Gretchen stood back, watching as the titanic sandworm sucked thousands of her sisters into its bottomless mouth. A group of maidens gathered behind her, watching the oil-black scorpions burst from the ground and attack the frontward assault of the Blade Maiden battalion.

              Gretchen knew she could do nothing against the sandworm. Even if she summoned the limits of her power, she would fall to the sheer size and might of the colossal creature. She turned and watched as a scorpion caught one of her fleeing sisters in its huge pincer, clamping it shut and cutting her clean in half. It skittered to the right, shooting out the long sharp stinger on the top of its tail, catching another Blade Maiden in the chest. The stinger hit her in the back and burst from her chest as the armored arachnid picked her up and flung her into the water that surrounded the city.

              Gretchen could kill the scorpions, but defeating one or more them would not stop Reinhold’s remaining forces from walking into her city. With a turn of her head, she signaled to the tower commander at the city gates. With an obedient nod, the woman in the tower disappeared.

              Gretchen held her hand up in a fist, signaling the surviving maidens behind her to stand their ground and cease advancement. The hum of the opening doors caught her attention. Marching five wide from the city, robed element benders filed out onto the battlefield.

              The Flame Legion marched out from the gate and with determined purpose, they faced the Horsemen of the Sand. The large group widened into a line, a hundred women wide and ten rows deep. The first row of fire benders planted their feet for balance and placed their palms together in front of them, pulling inward towards their stomachs. Orange flickering light grew within their hands, starting small but quickly increasing in intensity. When their power reached the desired concentration, each member thrust their hands forward, releasing a scorching ball of flame towards the lizard men. The fireballs accelerated to a flaming blur.

              The fireballs slammed into the ground underneath the mounted nomads. Exploding earth killed riders and mounts alike, throwing flaming shrapnel up fifty feet in the air. Deep and burning craters left the earth spotted and damaged. Another wall of fireballs crackled through the air, striking the center of the thirteen leaders, still positioned in their summoning ritual. Dirt, stone, and fire erupted from the impact, blasting the thirteen lizards, including Ess, outwards with catastrophic concussion.

              Poison-tipped bolts screamed through the air, striking two of the Flame Legion women. They wailing and screaming as their skin blackened and foamed. The flame benders focused their attention on the scattered lizard crossbowmen. A thick cone of flame billowed outwards, engulfing them in fire. They hissed and squealed and they attempted to run away from the fire that consumed them.

              As soon as Cedric noticed the flashes of fire and exploding balls of flame, he looked back at his soldiers, signaling them to bring the Boatman. The old man walked from the tree line towards the King. Once near the King’s right side, Cedric raised his finger urgently, pointing to the legion of flame benders that lit up the left side of the battlefield. The nomads fell and toppled under the heat and force of their power.

              “Now, Harold! Stop them!” Cedric yelled.

              Harold tilted his head downward and placed his fist in the palm of his left hand. An invisible field, created from the unbridled mana running through the heart and mind of the old man next to the King, grew outward from the Boatman in a circular globe. As Harold pulled more of his power, the speed of the developing orb increased, pushing past Reinhold’s camp as it extinguished the small campfires and torches and onto the battlefield.