Aster Fall, Ch 27: War at the Village (Patreon)

The Ice Sylphs on the far side of the village were holding against their attackers for now, but they were badly outnumbered. Even their higher levels weren’t enough to fix that.

Sam and the others came to a stop in the center of the village, a couple of dozen feet from the unidentifiable old woman who was guarding the children.

He would have run straight into the battle, but something about the old Ice Sylph made him halt.

She turned to look at them, her eyes a brilliant, piercing blue like the sky above the mountains.

A sense of crushing pressure washed over him.

There was a brilliant, icy threat in it like a blade pressed against his skin, clearly warning him not to move any closer.

The pressure faded slightly as her gaze continued on, but the threat remained.

As the Ice Sylph’s gaze fell on Aemilia, her eyes suddenly widened, some of the chill in them disappearing as her mood shifted.

“Sun Child, is that you?” The woman gasped in surprise, her hand rising to touch her heart.

She had met this little golden-haired girl many years before in a distant place, but she recognized her in an instant.

“Siwaha!” Aemilia called in shock, as she slid from her horse and pulled Altey into her arms. “What is happening?!”

“Come over here at once, girl!” Siwaha ordered, pointing to the group behind her. “Bring the child with you!”

Her gaze traveled back to Sam and the others, her attitude toward them shifting as she suddenly decided that they were allies instead of enemies.

Now that she’d seen Aemilia, the threat in her aura disappeared as the feeling of ice turned to a refreshing breeze.

As she looked at them and then to the Flaw that had appeared by her village just a few minutes before, she understood why they had arrived so suddenly.

When a Flaw appeared, the World Law assessed the danger in it and then summoned nearby forces to deal with it.

If the available forces in the local area were too weak, it sent the Call farther out.

If Aemilia and her group were here at the World Law's command, then they had come to help.

“All of you, if you are able to fight, you may assist in the battle,” she announced as a sparkle of icy blue light sprang from her hand, striking them all in the chest. “The Ice Sylphs formally request your aid.”

A feeling of warmth spread through Sam’s body, sinking into his veins like a winter’s kiss. He could feel some of his attributes rising, especially his Constitution.

It was similar to when Ayala had blessed them before a battle.

“You are marked as allies. The Valley will support you. Go and aid my kin!” Siwaha waved her hand forward, pointing them toward the battle.

“The warriors are away right now fighting a larger force. Only the villagers are left to protect our home. I will defend the children here, but you must help them.

“If the village falls, the magics tied to the valley will be damaged. The Blessing of the Ancients is fragile and tied to the hearthstone here. Go!”

Sam shoved his questions to the back of his mind as he pushed his horse’s reins into the hands of one of the young Ice Sylphs, and then he turned toward the battle.

He ran forward as a torrent of crystal flame surged out of his body and condensed into a spiral around him.

Beside him, Lenei, his father, Krana, and Lesat kept pace with him. All of them were surrounded by radiant energy in brilliant white, gold, yellow, and silver as their abilities activated.

“Flank to the right!” Lenei’s voice carried to his mind as she shared the plan that was on her mind.

Crystal Focus and his high Intellect both enhanced Sam’s mind enough that he had time to think during the battle, but the events still moved quickly.

Their group sprinted to the right of the Ice Sylphs, running up a short incline as they curved around and came back toward the enemies from the side.

The Ice Sylphs were fighting a mad battle, erecting ice walls that shattered as the trolls crashed into them.

Whistling arrows, flaring blue and white ice bolts that crackled like lightning as they shattered the air, and a growing hurricane force of icy winds and shredding hail blasted outward from the defenders, heading toward their enemies as they pushed them back again.

The Ice Sylph Sky Mage was summoning the storm, his hands raised as he poured more mana into it, and in front of him, the leading edge of the monsters were being frozen in a wave of ice.

Beside him, the Ice Spirit disappeared, turning into a blur of blue-white mana that flickered across the distance, twin blades in his hand stabbing outward to tear apart one of the serpents before he flickered back to his position.

The Rangers and Hunter fired arrows imbued with flickering mana, which split in the air into a hail of deadly points, slamming home into the serpents and trolls as they tore sizzling paths through their bodies.

Their efforts were filling the battlefield with magic, but it wasn’t enough to keep down the larger and more numerous monsters.

There were several enemy bodies scattered across the ground, but they weren’t killing them quickly enough.

One on one, the sylphs’ skills could have worn their enemies down, but right now it looked like they would be overwhelmed unless something changed.

Even as he watched, the sylvan Ice Weaver raised his hands and ice flowed up around one of the troll’s legs, tearing its leg off with an edge like a blade, but the troll beside it continued to charge forward, slamming into the defensive ice wall.

The Sky Mage shuddered backward as an Icesoul Wraith dove from the sky toward him, its fangs and claws splintering off of a swirling shield that surrounded him.

A moment later, the wraith exploded into a crackle of icy lightning, its form disintegrating as the Sky Mage tore it apart.

Then the sylph turned his attention back to the other mobs, pouring more mana out into the storm. Lightning crackled along the ice wall, stabbing outwards in splintering arcs to blow holes in the enemy lines.

The Greenscale Abyssal Serpents spit streams of venom that eroded the ice defenses and their scales left sizzling burns as they passed, slowly winding their way over the wall.

The three Iceblood Outsiders behind it watched it all with cold detachment, a cruel smile on their faces.

The shaman’s oversized hands rose as he sent a web of energy outward, which sank into the serpents’ scales and enhanced their speed.

As he took it all in, Sam’s hands rose and he concentrated on his bracer, pouring his essence through it as a Starfire spell took shape in his hands.

They needed something big to throw the enemies backward, to give the Ice Sylphs time to wear down the enemy forces with their higher levels.

That job fell to him.

Sizzling energy from the essence stars in his blood surged through his veins, bringing with it clarity, battle lust, and a killing intent that demanded blood for satisfaction.

He wanted to rip the Outsiders apart, tear their limbs from their bodies, and hurl their broken corpses into the sky in a shower of gore.

Two seconds later, the Starfire spell shot ahead of him, exploding between a pack of trolls and serpents in a roaring, blue-white fury as the rune erupted into an expanding sphere of blinding flames.

KraaAAATTOOOOOMMMmm!

Screams rose up from the trolls as they stumbled backward, the flames eating away at their skin that was accustomed to the cold.

The serpents writhed, their scales turning charred and dark as they were tossed backward through the air, their spines cracking like whips.

They weren’t all dead, but Sam didn’t pay attention to the rest of that group as he formed another spell as fast as he could.

In an instant decision, he channeled his energy into the bracer, summoning out a hundred charges of Starflame at once.

The largest flight of arrows that he’d ever formed sprang into existence.

They were similar to his crystal flame arrows, but they had a gleaming sapphire light and their tips glinted with the white fire of the star rune.

With a flicker of his hand, the arrows blasted forward, tearing through the sky toward the horde of Icesoul Wraiths that were hovering over the battlefield.

They struck the translucent forms like a storm of meteors striking an ocean, tearing holes through the wraiths’ bodies as they exploded outwards.

Then he did it again, pouring out the last remaining hundred charges of essence from his bracer into a second flight of Starflame arrows.

The star runes on their tips tore through the enemies as they exploded across the battlefield, shredding trolls, serpents, and wraiths all at once.

Some of the arrows exploded against ice or stone, but most struck home in the enemy.

He needed the biggest offense he could summon, and he poured everything he’d prepared into the battle, trying to swing it back in favor of the Ice Sylphs.

Beside him, Krana took up her own position, as stone spears rose out of the earth, stabbing upward through the trolls’ legs and the serpents’ scales.

His father, Lenei, and Lesat raced forward, heading into the battle with their weapons drawn.

Lenei was surrounded by a brilliant white aura that flared out from her like a sun, her Holy Armor gleaming as it infused her spear and shield.

Jeric was surrounded by his golden-yellow Earthen Shield and his hammers reverberated in the air, singing with a deep-throated hum as the land around him echoed with the force of the runes.

Lesat’s sword, shield, and armor were heavily enchanted as well, gleaming with power as he Shield Charged a serpent, throwing it backwards in a twisting coil, before he brought his sword around to slice at it.

The three of them stuck together in a tight triangle with Lenei at the point, her aura washing backward over all of them.

Slowly, they cut their way through the edge of the enemy and across the field as they headed for the Ice Sylphs’ right flank.

Once they got there, Lenei’s plan was to take over the close-range defense, to give the sylvan archers and mages the space they needed to make full use of their abilities.

Sam finished forming a second Starfire and threw it into the enemy, aiming for where a group of trolls was trying to force their way past the sylphs’ ice wall.

With the addition of the five of them, the enemies still outnumbered the defenders by two to one, but the Ice Sylphs had the advantage of levels on their side.

They were also defending their home.

They fought with a cold, brilliant savagery as they increased their offense and tore into the serpents and trolls that were closest to them.

If that had been the only force attacking them, it would have ended there as they slowly ground them down.

Unfortunately, the ice wyvern, the wraiths, and the three Iceblood Outsiders were still free to attack.

Sam’s Starflame arrows had torn apart half of the wraiths and injured the other monsters, but the remaining half were still flying above the battle.

Wisps of misty vital energy rose up from the blood and gore on the ground as it was devoured by the wraiths, and the holes in their forms began to close over again.

Sam’s vision narrowed as he focused on the remaining problems, another Starfire forming in his hands.

At that moment, the wyvern charged forward, throwing aside a troll and serpent that got in its way as it crashed toward the ice wall in front of the sylphs.

It was unable to fly with the lightning and ice storm that was covering the area, so instead it targeted the defenses the Sky Mage was controlling.

The ground all around echoed with a resounding craaaack of shattering ice as the monster slammed into the ice barrier.

The Sky Mage was the strongest of the defenders and almost forty levels higher than the wyvern, but his attention was split in many directions.

Size has a power all its own. The wyvern’s momentum caused the ice wall to buckle inwards, the lightning and ice along its length exploding outwards.

Some of the trolls and serpents near it were killed in an instant from the backlash, but the wall began to crumble.

Sam hurled the Starfire spell at the wyvern’s abdomen, just in front of its rear legs.

KraaAAATOOOOMmmm!

The rune sphere exploded with a roaring, blue-white fury that picked the wyvern’s rear legs up from the ground and flung it away from the wall, sending it rolling across the ground.

Scales and a rain of green blood erupted outward, charring black in an instant as the heat of the blast washed over them.

A moment later, the wyvern thrashed around as it forced itself back to its feet, its abdomen dragging in the snow as it left a trail of blood behind.

It wasn’t enough to kill the monster, but it had definitely distracted it.

There was a six-foot-long gash in its abdomen now where its scales and flesh had been torn apart.

He was down to 46 essence as he reached into his storage, grabbed the first two auras he found, and combusted them, bringing him back up to 86.

He had plenty of auras at the moment, nearly 65 of them, but he was limited by the number that he could combust without damaging his meridians.

An idea occurred to him as he seized an Aura of Compressed Flame, one from the Flamecaller Devils that they’d fought on the way to Highfold.

He glanced up at the five remaining wraiths that were hovering in the sky.

With a gesture, a rolling line of crystal flame formed between his hands, the Crystal Wave he’d used a few times before.

The Aura of Compressed Flame was in his right hand as he infused its aura into the spell, calling on Assume Aura as he forced the divergent energies to merge together.

The aura crumbled to ash in his hand and he replaced it with another, infusing that aura into the spell as well.

He looked upward as he unleashed the Crystal Wave.

The spell was a thin line of condensed crystal flame as it flew across the sky, extending in either direction like a rope as it became larger and larger.

As soon as it hit the edge of his aura, he ignited it.

The line exploded outwards into a roaring wall of compressed red and crystal blue flames that was twenty feet high and sixty feet long, searing the sky with light as it tore across the remaining distance toward the wraiths.

The floating forms of the wraiths screamed as the opposing energy of the flames tore at their translucent bodies, disintegrating them in chunks that burned like parchment before they turned to ash.

The spell wasn’t wide enough to encompass all of the wraiths, but he got three of them, leaving only two still alive.

A wave of his hand summoned two dozen crystal flame arrows and he infused another Aura of Compressed Flame into each set of twelve.

A dozen arrows burned with hellish red light and flaring crystal as they surged toward each of the remaining wraiths.

The wraiths tried to evade, but the lightning storm in the sky above limited how high they could go. All they could do was swoop into angled dives that carried them toward the ground.

Their screams echoed out, piercing through their air with a high-pitched sonic vibration that tore at Sam’s ears.

A dozen arrows ripped through each of them, tearing their cloak-like forms into burning strips that still echoed with their death screams.

An ecstatic satisfaction surged through Sam’s veins as he heard his enemies’ death cries and his mouth parted, his fangs bared as he roared into the air.

He wanted their blood and deaths.

This was his world.

They had dared to attack near his family, to disrupt the valley he’d chosen as a home.

Their lives threatened everything that was important to him. He would not allow them to continue to exist.

He turned his attention to the wyvern and the serpents as crystal flames poured out of him, rising higher into the air.

There, in all of the dead Outsiders, the wraiths and the serpents that had been slain, he could feel the burning flickers of essence.

The stars in his blood roared with him, an echoing, deep-throated command tearing across the battlefield in a wave that was half sound and all emotion.

“Stars of Aster Fall! RISE!”

His aura surged outwards as he commanded it and his hand clawed through the air, ripping it from their corpses as he called it to him.

Burning stars in greenish black and translucent blue separated from the corpses of the dead Outsider serpents and wraiths, floating like sparkling souls against the snow as they obeyed Sam’s command and flew toward him.

Across from him, the Iceblood Outsiders shouted, their voices turning ugly as their expressions changed for the first time.

The Iceblood Outsider’s eyes turned to lock on Sam and he felt the ping of his amulet sounding like a vibrating gong played by a madman as they tried to pierce his illusion.

The Iceblood Shaman’s arms rose, and Sam felt a tug against his aura as the Outsider tried to interfere.

The essence stars flickered, but they were already in his control. They spun through the air like dancing ghosts, flying toward his chest as their colors began to turn to a bright crystal blue.

“Come!” he roared out, his hand rising as his talons reached out to them across the battlefield. “Come to me!”