Echoes of War, Ch 10: Winter Rising (Patreon)

At the commander's signal, the royal army’s mages launched the first attack. They were clearly used to attacking a fortified position and had been waiting for the order. Their spells came together in an instant. Bolts of flame and wind spears flew toward the wall, their edges twisting with contained energy.

“Shields!” Belanos’s voice roared out across the dwarven line, followed by the slam of a thousand dwarven shields hitting stone as their edges interlocked. That wasn’t all, however, as the edges of the shields glowed with geometric runes as a bright yellow barrier flowed from one to the next, creating an unbroken expanse of a hemispherical shield across the top of the wall.

The magical bolts were quick, but they weren’t fast enough to reach the wall before the dwarves had their defenses at full power. Unfortunately, there were nearly two thousand mages in the army. The spells slammed against the shield with a thunderous eruption of force as a wall of cascading energies filled the air.

After a moment, the chaotic explosion of energy created a swirling morass of elemental power in front of the wall that tore apart spells that arrived later than the rest. As it expanded, it turned into a wall of flame and wind that devoured one another, rising higher and spreading as the energies blended. If anything had been standing inside of it, it would have been incinerated in an instant.

The volatile energies were quick to fade, however, and when they did, it revealed an unscathed dwarven wall behind it, the shields still interlocked at the top. The bright yellow barrier glowed with runes that were saturated with power and behind them the stones shone more brightly than ever, as if they’d just been cleansed.

The army greatly outnumbered them, but the defenses weren’t for show. The dwarves had poured their work into them for centuries. They had been unused for a long time, so many years that the covering of moss and vine was more familiar to visitors than the stones beneath, but now, the walls were finally coming to life. As the mana of unleashed spells washed over them, the enchanted stones absorbed it, their defense increasing.

Dwarven stonework was legendary for a reason. The entire race was devoted to it, their classes blended with the Earth itself. Trying to break a wall that they’d built was no easy feat. And that was just the defensive aspect.

“Golems!” Belanos’s shout came again. It was a proud roar that rolled out across the dwarven line. In its wake, the glowing runes gathered together, collecting more loose mana as they flowed toward the stone defenders in their niches.

The burly golems were ten feet tall and five feet wide in their inactive state, their bodies hulking wedges of stone, but as they began to move, Earth mana swirled around them, infusing their structure. The runes across their surface grew brighter as magical barriers appeared around them, making them look much bigger. The hammers and shields in their hands rose as they stepped forward. The earth rumbled as their feet struck it.

A hundred golems marched forward from the wall. Now that they were active, the crackle of Earth mana sped their steps as they formed into a wedge formation five hundred feet wide. The shields around them interlocked, fusing into one another, and their bodies blurred as they shot forward toward the army. Their charge shook the slope of the mountain where it met the road, making snow and ice dance upward.

On the opposite side, the siege engines were coming together, but not quickly enough to fire before the golems reached the forward ranks of the army. At the same time, the soldiers weren’t useless. They formed together, their own shields interlocking as the mages began trying to disrupt the ground in front of the golems and break their charge.

Some areas turned to mud, others into a field of earthen spikes, and bolts of fire, wind, and more shot downward, aiming to disrupt the golems. At the front of the army, a glowing blue wedge appeared, a shaped defensive shield to split the attack coming at them. The constructs were like rolling boulders and they slammed into the front line with an earth-rattling force. The mana in their forms had gathered over centuries and they were individually much stronger than the soldiers, showing off why dwarven defenses were so feared, but there were only a hundred of them compared to the defense of ten thousand.

A wave of rebounding force from the impact broke through the front ranks, crushing a dozen soldiers, but the momentum of the charge was split apart as the golems were thrown to the sides, the force of their charge sending them rolling.

The golems were quick to gather themselves. Their limbs reoriented as they rolled to a halt, their head, torso, and then legs rotating back to face the dwarven wall, and then they charged backward again toward the defenses, like raindrops returning to the source.

Their charge had been impressive, but not enough to break the army.

The three powerful mages at the front interrupted the spells they’d been building, targeting the scattered golems as they let out a roar of anger. They weren’t as quick to react as the soldiers, who had clearly been drilled to near perfection, but they knew the danger of letting that force continually attack the army. They had to destroy the constructs if they wanted an easy time of breaking the wall.

It took them a moment to change their tactics, but they were no slouches. Their elemental alignments were for ice, earth, and wind and their quick gestures hurled a wave of those energies at the ground, favoring mass attacks over trying to hit their targets individually. With their power at the Third Evolution, each strike was devastating.

Twisting wind blades fell like a storm, accompanied by a rain of earthen spears and icy blades. The ground between the army and the wall exploded as craters were hammered into it. Golems went flying like children’s toys across the field, their defensive shields breaking. Limbs and chunks of stone were torn away as holes were drilled through their bodies and their torsos shattered.

About half managed to return to the wall, but the rest were left as rubble across the field, their enchantments still glowing from their broken stones. Years of dwarven work had been destroyed in an instant. On the ramparts, the dwarves let out angry shouts, their voices rumbling.

“Tear down this wall!” Ilias shouted to the three mages, his voice twisted with rage. The commander was even angrier than the dwarves, insulted by the valley’s defenses that blocked his advance and by the death of his troops in the front rank. He clearly wanted to roll over the defenders and torture them for their refusal to obey.

The mages turned away from the remaining golems, although not as quickly as Ilias would have liked, and began new spells. Their faces were pinched and hard. They were clearly unhappy at being ordered around even if they were part of the army, but they did as the commander ordered. Their spells this time were far more complex as their Siege Mage and Mage of the Winds subclasses came to the fore.

Complex yellow diagrams began to form in the air as the Earth mage focused on the ground below the wall. Beside him, the Ice mage looked toward the mountain slope and formed his own spell. Ice began to rotate around him, swiftly gathering into a great battering ram that hovered in the air. The Wind mage looked up, his arms raised as studied the clouds and sent his mana toward them. They began to swiftly darken and twist, forming the signs of an approaching tornado.

If those three spells landed on the wall, it wasn’t clear if the dwarven defenses would be enough to hold them.

Behind them, the army returned to assembling their siege engines, preparing to assault the fortifications themselves. Despite the deaths at the front, their movements were swift and polished, showing their discipline and perhaps that they feared their commander more than the enemy.

“This can’t be allowed!” Jeric tightened his hands into fists as he studied the earth and ice outside the walls, and then he reached out with his connection to the elements around him. This wasn’t the mountain, so his efforts were less than they would have been, but he couldn’t just sit back and watch.

His influence flowed outward in a wave, sinking into the earth below the walls that the mage wanted to break. What he found there, however, was the steady hum of dwarven enchantments that were vastly more powerful than his own mana. Sensing his intent, they kindly brushed him aside, pushing him back to the surface.

Instead of trying again, he turned toward the ice on the slopes that the other mage was concentrating into a battering ram, and tried to pull it away. If he could disrupt the spell, or at least slow it down, it would give them more time. Beside him, he could feel Aemilia radiating moonlight as she studied the area. Suddenly, she took his hand, showing him a part of the spell in front of him that was weaker than the rest.

Jeric directed his attention to it, pushing his mana to the limit as he tried to drive a wedge into the spell and break it. A wave of distorted mana met him, crashing into his spirit and hurling him away. The result sent him staggering backward, his lungs on fire as he felt blood filling his mouth. It felt like his limbs had just been scorched with liquid fire.

The Ice mage was smirking at him from beyond the wall, his eyes cold. He’d sensed his attempt and countered it. The pressure of the Third Evolution mage’s mana against his own had done the rest. At Level 189, he wasn’t a match for it. It was like he was trying to stop a river by throwing stones at it.

The mages’ spells were forming now. Yellow tendrils sank deep into the earth to try and trigger an earthquake as a tornado stretched downward from the clouds. The battering ram was barreling forward toward the gate, its forward edge like a blade as the massive weight behind it pushed it onward. To the rear, the army was finishing their siege engines and bolts began to arc into the sky, heading toward the ramparts.

At that moment, Siwaha’s hand touched Jeric’s shoulder, sending a cooling wave of icy mana through his body that washed away the disrupted mana and cleared his mind. The blood in his mouth evaporated as he turned his head and spat, releasing a cloud of icy reddish mist that instantly dissolved into the wind. For someone else, that much ice mana might have harmed them, but to him it was invigorating.

“This is a fight for all of us,” Siwaha said simply as she stepped forward, her voice humming with magic. “I promised you once that you would be safe in my valley. Ice Sylphs have always kept our promises. Now, they have crossed the line.”

Her staff was slanted in her hand as she looked at the mages in the air and the army behind them. Her lips were pressed together tightly, but she only shook her head. A sparkling wave of mana gathered around her, flowing from the depths of the valley. It resembled a flurry of snowflakes and a twisting ice storm as it concentrated around the staff in her hand and swiftly grew larger.

The icy flames of attack spell across the walls of the sylvan fortress deeper in the valley glowed brilliantly as threads of mana floated away from them, disappearing into the air only to return around Siwaha’s staff. The shining walls of the fortress glittered in the sun as the gathered ice drakes and griffins looked toward the enemy, waiting for the signal to attack.

“Your forces are clearly used to oppressing others, so let me show you what that’s like,” she announced, her voice as clear as daybreak across the battlefield. There was a vibrant power in it that shook the mind and it made the soldiers stagger as they temporarily loosened their hold on their weapons and the siege engines paused.

As she brought the end of her staff down on the wall, icy tendrils of mana surged outward from it, twining through the air and down across the wall. In an instant, they covered the battlefield, wrapping the soldiers’ limbs in ice. Then it targeted the work of the three mages.

The earth mage’s spell was the first to suffer as the wave of icy mana flowed across the field. Where they met, the ice current wove directly through the spell, piercing the structure of the magic as it continued onward and tore it apart.

The battering ram shattered next, its icy nature too close to Siwaha’s power to resist. A great crack tore down the center, followed an instant later by sheets of ice fragmenting off in every direction. As her spell passed on, the shards of ice disintegrated into it and joined her, increasing the force.

The tornado that was about to touch down was wrapped in a spiral of icy winds that flowed from the bottom to the top. The twisting blades of air that made it were quickly sealed in ice, their edges coated until they shone like icicles. A moment later, the tornado was a crystalline structure of fragmented lines, jagged and floating loosely in the air, its structure frozen. The winds that had animated it were gone, completely replaced by ice. Then it collapsed under its weight, turning into a rain of frozen shards that crashed toward the ground with an ear-piercing thunder.

It all happened in two breaths of time as Siwaha stood at the front of the wall like a queen of ice with frost drifting around her, clinging to her hair and skin. The land in front of her was pristine and white, covered in a frozen shroud. The soldiers were dusted with snow that made them look like statues.

Even so, it was clear that she had been merciful. The Ice Sylphs weren’t known for that quality in their legends, so it was probably her desire to stick to their ancient treaty, the one that stemmed from their mother goddess rather than anything as simple as the kingdom. The soldiers were trapped, but small movements showed them stirring as snow drifted away from their hair and clothes. Their legs and arms were sealed by the river of ice that covered the field, but their vitality was strong and they would eventually be able to break free.

“You should feel fortunate that you are outside the limits of this valley,” she announced with a grim coldness, “Otherwise, you would not return.”

Her words drew a line in the snow, telling them what would happen if they crossed the wall. It seemed she saw the dwarves more as their protection than hers. With her words came a stirring of clouds as the sky cleared and the sun shone brightly on the figures of the trapped soldiers and the mages.

The commander and his three supporters were still floating in the air. They looked bedraggled, their hair disheveled and clothes torn from the icy winds, but they were alive. Siwaha’s spells had countered theirs, but they weren’t defeated. They just looked angry and embarrassed that the woman they’d underestimated had reduced them to that state.

They were used to displays of their own grandeur, and being shown that it wasn’t the reality here left them furious. Their mana swelled around them as they lashed out, destroying the snowflakes that covered their clothes. Waves of power surrounded them as they began to prepare another attack that was stronger than the last.

This time, they weren’t just acting under orders. They were personally invested in destroying the valley. The force of mana radiating from them shook the walls and broke apart some of the ice around the soldiers below, until it felt like the entire road was trembling. The mages pulled out focusing staves as the commander drew his sword and pointed it at Siwaha, ignoring the rest of the defenders.

“Go back,” Siwaha announced as she looked at the commander, ignoring his actions, “and tell your king to mind his manners in front of his elders.” The staff in her hand was still crackling with power and the ice mana around her was as intense as ever, adding a sharp warning to her words.

“You won’t be the first weather witch I’ve killed,” Ilias snorted as he held his sword in front of him. It was heavily enchanted, the pattern on it flaring brightly enough that it looked like flames rising around him. He straightened his clothes as he recovered his composure. “Tricks won’t save you. Even if you’ve trapped the foot soldiers, the real force of the army is the four of us. All you’ve done is delay the inevitable. Even if you kill us, more will come. The kingdom’s power is greater than you can imagine.”

He glanced down at the soldiers and then ignored them as he sheathed his sword again and pulled out a large black disk. It was about a foot across and heavily engraved with enchantment lines. A sense of dense mana radiated from it with a signature that spoke of dark and heavy metal. Even from a distance, it gave off a sense of great weight.

“Let’s see whose magic is stronger,” he said with a dark look, “yours or the king’s. You’re obviously relying on this valley to power your spells. This is the Mountain Crushing Disk, an ancient artifact forged from the heaviest metals in the kingdom and enchanted by generations of earth mages. It has the unique ability to crush magic in an area. There is no enchantment that can stand up to it.” He glanced at the mountain of Sky Guard to his left and then at the mountains in the valley behind the wall. “It also has the habit of killing anything that it affects, since it tears the mana out of them. It’s a painful death as your bones break under the force.”

As he held the disk out in front of him, the mages beside him turned toward it and began to channel their mana into the artifact. With four Third Evolution sources powering it, the disk swiftly began to radiate a threatening presence.

“Step back from the wall,” Siwaha said as she turned to Jeric and Aemilia. Her voice carried to all of the dwarves as well. “Everyone, move deeper into the valley, at least half a mile. The defenses here are thin and that artifact is dangerous. I will block the effect alone.”

She was clearly worried about the impact of the artifact on the under-leveled people around her and was unwilling to risk their lives.

“You should retreat to the relic,” she added as she looked at Jeric and Aemilia. “It will be safer there.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” Jeric shook his head. He knew he had to protect his family, but at the same time, he couldn’t let Siwaha fight this battle for him. She was the strongest in the valley, but he wasn’t sure how close she was to her limits, even with the support of the old magics. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but it wouldn’t be right. What if you can’t block it? The bit of help we provide could be what’s needed.”

“No dwarf of my clan has ever abandoned this wall,” Belanos growled at Siwaha. “Retreating from here means losing all we’ve worked on in this valley. Here we stand! Let’s see if his magic is as strong as he thinks. He thinks earth can crush a dwarf?! Hah!”

Behind him, the dwarves hammered their shields into the stone, releasing a pounding beat that caused the runes across the wall to glow brightly. The golems below took up a defensive position, their barriers fusing with the wall to make it even stronger, but with only half of them left, it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

“Even if you run,” Ilias mocked as he overheard the conversation, “I’ll chase you down. No one will escape. Soon this entire area will be surrounded. There’s nowhere you can go in the world. The king wants your valley and he’ll have it. You might last a round or two, but will you survive a hundred royal mages attacking at once?”

The buildup of magic from the artifact began to rise. It sent waves of dark energy out around it that fell to the earth like a waterfall and began to spread. Where it touched, the blades of grass and mountain flowers turned to dust and were ground into the earth. Rippling lines like those of an impact crater spread outward, churning the soil into strange rows. It was clearly close to activation.

“I never should have let the dwarves build a wall out here,” Siwaha muttered to herself, which raised some questions about her true age, but she didn’t tell them to leave again. “The most difficult thing is protecting those around you.” She glanced at the road and then shook her head.

Jeric followed her gaze and nodded. At this point, collapsing the road wouldn’t do anything except kill the soldiers who were trapped. The main four were flying and there was still a bit of earth in front of the wall that didn’t belong to the road.

What surprised him was that Siwaha reached out and set her hands on his and Aemilia’s shoulders. He felt a surge of icy mana flow through his body, far stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. At that moment, he felt connected to the valley and the ancient fortress as its strength filled his bones.

He couldn’t see his own features, but he watched it on Aemilia’s. Her eyes had always been the blue of a summer sky and her hair like spun gold, but as ice covered her body, they changed. Her eyes turned sharp, glowing like chill blue sapphires, and her hair turned to blue and white, growing longer as icicles spread through it, turning it into a jagged waterfall that tumbled down her back.

Her skin paled, turning to a pale white tinged with blue. Where her bones were visible through her skin, they turned even paler, until they were a savage white like ancient frost exposed to the air, and her fingernails glimmered like crystalline shards.

Siwaha had once created a similar change in the Ice Sylph villagers, but he’d never expected to see it on his wife. And from her stunned expression looking at him from those fierce eyes, he knew his appearance had changed as well. The strength of a frozen age filled his bones, roaring as it demanded a fight. It felt like it wanted to crush everything around, sealing it eternally into a sleep that would never wake.

It was a feeling he’d never experienced and it was as frightening as it was powerful, nearly drowning his mind in the demand. He struggled to keep his awareness, his body trembling under the force that was infusing it. Aemilia’s face displayed the same struggle, her eyes burning into his like frostbite.

At that moment, the artifact activated. Its power roared outward, unleashing a dark wave of energy across the ground that headed for the wall. All across the defenses, the yellow barrier of the dwarves’ earth magic sprang upward to face it. The dark wave collided with it like a titan’s fist, sending a rolling explosion of force across the wall as the foundations shook.

At the base of the wall, the golems trembled as they held their shields higher. Some of them exploded under the force. Others staggered, falling to the side as they tried and failed to maintain their position. The runes on the walls shook, their mana flickering under the force as they tried to resist the attack.

At that moment, a clarion cry like a hundred frozen bugles echoed through the air and crashed down on the ears of the defenders like shattering ice. The roar of ice drakes and the screech of griffins joined it as for the first time in more than five thousand years, the sky was filled with the Legions of Ice.

“Unleash the Winter!” The shout was raised by hundreds of voices as Ice Sylphs stood astride the drakes, their feet planted firmly on the frozen white scales as they drew back bows and unleashed a wave of arrows that split the air like frozen lightning.

Each of them was as ferocious looking as Aemilia, their bodies coated in ice and the light of the sun. Spears were slung across their backs, and as the drakes dived, their feet never moved. Their balance was perfect, keen and agile, and arrows flowed from the bows in their hands.

Their eyes were as hard as winter, with no trace of mercy in their expression, only unbridled ferocity and keen joy at battle.

Ice Sylph. Legionnaire of Ice-Drake Rider. Level Unknown.

Ice Sylph. Hoarfrost Archer of Ice-Griffin Scout. Level Unknown.

Ice Sylph. Mage of Winter-The Frozen Storm. Level Unknown.

Other names and unfamiliar classes flashed past, many of them duplicates of one another, showing that the classes Jeric was seeing were a result of the magic he could feel in his bones. Their levels were unknown, a flashing concept in his mind, but he felt the familiar spirits under the frost. These were his friends and allies, the hunting teams and the Ice Sylphs of the village, but they were nothing like he remembered. Their classes had changed completely.

There weren’t many of the Legion of Ice left, but their ancient ferocity was on full display as they attacked. Their weapons burned with cold majesty as they tore through the ripples of dark magic that were assaulting the wall and targeted the source. The Ice Drakes roared, their throats swelling as massive bolts of ice with currents of frost twining around it shot forth, heading for the enemy.

As he watched it happen, the winter in Jeric’s bones demanded that he join in and stand beside them. The same ferocity was in Aemilia’s eyes as she turned toward the army. Her class had morphed from Archivist of the Moons-Seer of the Three Moons to Hoarfrost Mage-Seer of Moonlit Ice, and he had the feeling that his own had done something similar, infused by the winter in his blood.

Feeling that driving pulse, he drew the two hammers at his belt, which were covered in a jagged coating of white ice, and felt the solid weight in his hands. With a roar that was nearly as loud as an ice drake’s, he leapt over the forty-foot wall, the hammers tracing a crystalline arc in the air as he aimed for the enemy’s head.

He had the feeling this battle wouldn’t be the end, but he was sure that winter would always rise again.