Despite their losses, the mermineae continue to throw themselves against the centzon’s defensive wall. Their efforts often in vain as either the wall itself tears apart them apart or the slingshot ram ploughs through them.
I’m not sure how that massive piston works, as the wall still appears fully intact whenever it rolls away. Then again, I don’t really understand how any of their machinery works.
Several mermineae jump over the wall, bypassing the defence entirely, but are shot out of the sky by the harpoon launchers or descended upon by the hunters with their own weapons.
I finally get my first look at what those logs can do. Some hunters’ contraptions become spinning saws that remind me of Grímr’s plumage. They cut right through the mermineae with hardly any application of force. Is that what is on the other side of the wall? Do spinning blades bisect our attackers?
The buzzing saw is by far the hunters’ favourite weapon against the mermineae, but there are some that use different forms. A piston with a spike or blunt head used with enough force to kill in one strike, regardless of impact point. A shoulder mounted cannon that pelts the mermineae with hundreds of tiny pellets that remind me far too much of those bullets used by the albanics.
I haven’t seen a single use of water. It is relieving to find their weapons aren’t filled with water ready to attack me. Though, it’s still possible they are carrying some with them. Hopefully, without the river to pump water from, they won’t be able to hurt me easily.
I shake my head to clear the suspecting thoughts. They’ve yet to show anything suspicious. I can’t keep treating everyone I meet like they’re looking for ways to end my life or steal my freedom the moment I turn my back.
I’ve been in plenty of vulnerable states while with them, and they haven’t once tried to end me. After I’d regained the freedom of my mind, I’d spent days in an exhausted haze. If they’d attacked us then, I wouldn’t have survived.
They’ve already proven they are on our side — at least for the time being — so I should try being more trusting.
The machinery from our row finally joins the fight. Our two adjacent siege engines unfold into three large spinning wheels cutting into a wide tube. In moments, the machine flings a boulder half as tall as I am over the wall and into the mass of mermineae.
I can’t follow its path after it passed the wall, but I can definitely track the corpses it leaves behind. The stone rolls far further than it should, considering its arc. But that isn’t the weirdest thing. It doesn’t tear through them in a straight line. It curves far off to the left, even taking some mermineae in their sides.
“You idiot!” I hear the shout from the origin of the boulder. “Match your ammo to the enemy!” The other hunters on the weapon grumble, but got to work.
The next projectile out of the machine appears much the same at first; a stone sphere, but it quickly becomes apparent the difference between this boulder and the last. The ball splits into several flat discs that fan out as they pass the wall. Spinning at an astonishing rate, they hover through the air before the mermineae find themselves once again at the mercy of the hunters’ weaponry.
Some discs continue spinning out of the range of my sense, slicing through any not hugging the ground close enough. Others’ flight are disturbed, and tumble along the earth like runaway wheels, but still sharp and fast enough to cut.
I glance down at my spear. I’m not going to get the chance to practice, am I?
“Is it usually this easy for you?” I ask.
Grímr’s eyes finally snap away from the bloodshed before us. He looks like he wants to say something, his eyes darting between me and Atl, but keeps his silence.
“Against the yoe? Yeah, they never learn. We adapted to their swarm methods centuries ago and they’ve never thought to try anything different. But what can you expect from animals?” He shakes his head with a sigh. “The cult is a different story. The unnatural power of theirs can be rather frustrating.”
As he says that, a portion of the wall before us decays before our eyes. A concentrated effort of the Forvaal must have finally breached our defences.
“But we’ve worked on countermeasures.”
An egg-shaped contraptions launches through the new gap in the wall, obliterating the many trying to rush through. Like the first ones, this egg spins and jumps around amongst the mermineae without resistance.
Each of the rams along the wall stop. They dig into the ground and instead of moving along the fortified walls, they lift the wall and push it inward. The damaged section is ejected, and the wall locks in place, reformed. In only a few seconds, the rams are back to slamming through groups of mermineae and the breach is closed.
“But the cultists are still yoe at their core. They never learn. Never adapt.”
We stand there for a minute, just watching the never ending swarm of mermineae continue to throw themselves to their deaths. Near the edges of our lines, they try to move around us, but what appear to be far more controlled versions of the egg weapon protect our flanks. The large wheels move fast and cut off the enemy’s attempts at repositioning.
Another new siren blares from the towers behind us. Immediately, most of the hunters around us abandon the siege engines, leaving only a few to continue their operation.
Atl clambers off the side of our own. “We’ve spotted a cult leader. It’s time to leave if you don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
The hunters trigger the rest of the egg contraptions which bound over the wall as their operators flee to the rear of our formation. The hunters controlling the moving wall rams jump off and follow.
Grímr and I climb off our siege engine — which has yet to see any use — and join Atl as he flicks a lever and runs for the back towers.
Despite not having any more operators, the pistons along the wall continue to slide along and hammer through the wall.
“If you don’t need to be on them to operate, then why have any hunters manning the machines in the first place?” I ask.
“They can only run a short while with no one to operate the cranks,” Atl says and points to a ram. “If you pay attention, the piston has a repetitive pattern. Without a hunter to guide it, they need to rely on simple cycles.”
He is right. There are only three places where the ram breaks through the wall now, rotating through each in order. The Forvaal decay another hole through the wall, but the machines don’t close the gap as they did before. Mermineae flood through, still struggling to break through the barrage of projectiles.
The command towers groan as we pass them. I glance up, unsurprised to see the first stages of a transformation. The walls twist and the upper platform of stone slides outward. Even at my low angle, the long barrel is easily visible as it rises high into the air.
It is entirely made of that strange metal the centzon use. The tower rattles as the barrel stops rising. It spins as it angles down on the front line, exposing an absolutely huge contraption at the barrel’s base. Each of the commanders jump off the flat viewing platforms and take a position upon the machine.
We make it to the rear of the towers, each of which now supporting its own long barrel as an explosion erupts from the wall. The wall is well out of my sense range now, so I have to twist on my feet to see the source of the explosion.
A dust-cloud billows from a wide missing section in our defence. It’s not far from the breach left by the Forvaal, but it is easily on a far greater scale. The Viisin is finally here.
Barely visible through the smoke and ash is a silhouette of our greatest threat. The centzon have shown absolute superiority until now, but I struggle to see how they could beat this being. I saw it shrug off decapitation, after all. It jumps forward, obliterating the first siege engine on touch.
In near-perfect unison, the towers unload on the Viisin. The massive barrels launching another projectile every second, loud clanks and thunks proceeding each blast. The sustained fire from hundreds of rounds does more damage to our defences than the Viisin has yet managed.
Despite the damage it takes, it stands strong. Legs, arms, its head; it doesn’t matter what part of the Viisin’s body is annihilated, it heals through it.
It doesn’t take any permanent damage, but the continuous fire prevents it from advancing. Instead, it dashes to the side, intent on destroying much of the other defences and siege engines along our line. Some of the projectile launchers throwing spinning disks hit the Viisin, but they decay on contact with its skin, leaving no damage at all.
This isn’t all they have planned, right? It’s obviously not effective. Even if the cannons are incredibly powerful, it means nothing if we can’t kill the Viisin. I glance to Atl at my side, but he seems completely unfazed by the ineffectiveness of their weapons.
He turns to me and I look away, but I’m too late.
“Don’t worry, this is just supposed to stop the cult leader from approaching. Normal projectiles don’t work on them. We have these auto-cannons to blast it with special, pressurised capsules that explode upon impact and pelt them with shrapnel designed to decay far slower than normal. It lets us actually hurt them.”
Hundreds of mermineae rush through the new breaches made by a combination of Forvaal, Viisin and auto-cannon efforts. I now realise that many of the machines after the wall are long range, so the swarm of mermineae faces almost no opposition until they reach the siege weapon Grímr and I rode on.
The mermineae must trigger some mechanism as the — until now — unused machines now blast liquid all over the attackers.
I clench my fist. For a moment, anger bubbles in me as I realise they had me riding on the machine they’d filled with water. But that anger quickly fades as I notice the liquid is black. It’s not water.
Each of the strange liquid carrying machines starts rolling forward, pushing past the mermineae and coating them all as they pass.
Atl touches my shoulder. “I know we said to hold back, but you can go ahead for now. Try not to damage our machines, please.”
I look at him, confused, before sliding my attention to the now visible black mermineae. Unsure, I throw a stream of flame forward, careful to keep my inner flame away from the liquid. As soon as a single spark touches the black substance, everything before me engulfs in fire.
My eyes widen and I quickly shove everything into the fire. The liquid is unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s like the flammable jelly down in the tunnels, but amplified, compressed, and oh, so much more tasty. My fire spreads over everything in an instant.
My flames are pushed far hotter than they’ve ever been, glowing bright yellow, then white, then strangely, they disappear. Well, they disappear from my sight, but I know they’re still there, burning and incinerating anything they touch. It’s a struggle to hold myself back from annihilating those contraptions so inconveniently in my way.
“Don’t touch the oil-wagons,” Atl says, only barely quick enough for me to stop eating my way up the streams.
Each of the wagons now rolls past the remains of the wall, coating every mermineae it passes in my new favourite food… or, I guess, drink. That feels strange to think. I’ve never drunk anything before.
The mermineae and the Forvaal amongst them try their hardest to break the machines, but an extra thick layer of the centzon’s strange metal delays their attempts.
“How do you deal with something that can not only brush off most attacks, but will actively recover from the hits that reach them?” Atl asks suddenly.
The Viisin stops ploughing through the defences and throws itself toward the oil-wagons now deep amongst the mermineae.
“You hit them so hard they don’t have a chance to recover.”
The Viisin lands on the wagon and that’s the last thing it does. There’s a flash of light and my flame involuntarily rockets through the air, spreading with an intensity I’ve never felt. Only a moment later does the blast rattle my body.
Atl pulls me out of my stupor. He drags me under the arch of the tower, alongside Grímr and all the other centzon. After a few moments, a rain of metal shards falls from the sky. I listen to the rapid thunks as the shrapnel pelts the tower above us.
I can’t feel the Viisin anymore. Either it is dead, or it is now outside the spreading flame.
I shake off Atl’s grip and poke my head around the side of the tower. Smoke rises hundreds of metres in the air before curving outward. My flames linger within the rising clouds.
What was that? It felt more intense than being hit by Spenne’s lightning. I almost missed it, but in the fraction of a second, I felt heat near incomprehensible. Something I’ve never felt before. Lightning was similar, but there was some distinction between the feelings.
The mermineae that remain now flee. I really don’t understand how they could keep trying to overwhelm us when they saw their kin dying by the hundreds before their eyes, but at least now they give up.
Unfortunately, they flee down into the Alps. Don’t they know we are here to cut our way back to the east? They are going to die by going down there. Is their god, Kalma, really more terrifying than facing the centzon?
The memory of Hund tearing through an army is all the answer I need.
At least we know the centzon can fight off the Viisin. Hopefully, we won’t have to deal with any others until we reach home.
Huh… I guess I’ve already decided.
We’re going home.
Despite their losses, the mermineae continue to throw themselves against the centzon’s defensive wall. Their efforts often in vain as either the wall itself tears apart them apart or the slingshot ram ploughs through them.
I’m not sure how that massive piston works, as the wall still appears fully intact whenever it rolls away. Then again, I don’t really understand how any of their machinery works.
Several mermineae jump over the wall, bypassing the defence entirely, but are shot out of the sky by the harpoon launchers or descended upon by the hunters with their own weapons.
I finally get my first look at what those logs can do. Some hunters’ contraptions become spinning saws that remind me of Grímr’s plumage. They cut right through the mermineae with hardly any application of force. Is that what is on the other side of the wall? Do spinning blades bisect our attackers?
The buzzing saw is by far the hunters’ favourite weapon against the mermineae, but there are some that use different forms. A piston with a spike or blunt head used with enough force to kill in one strike, regardless of impact point. A shoulder mounted cannon that pelts the mermineae with hundreds of tiny pellets that remind me far too much of those bullets used by the albanics.
I haven’t seen a single use of water. It is relieving to find their weapons aren’t filled with water ready to attack me. Though, it’s still possible they are carrying some with them. Hopefully, without the river to pump water from, they won’t be able to hurt me easily.
I shake my head to clear the suspecting thoughts. They’ve yet to show anything suspicious. I can’t keep treating everyone I meet like they’re looking for ways to end my life or steal my freedom the moment I turn my back.
I’ve been in plenty of vulnerable states while with them, and they haven’t once tried to end me. After I’d regained the freedom of my mind, I’d spent days in an exhausted haze. If they’d attacked us then, I wouldn’t have survived.
They’ve already proven they are on our side — at least for the time being — so I should try being more trusting.
The machinery from our row finally joins the fight. Our two adjacent siege engines unfold into three large spinning wheels cutting into a wide tube. In moments, the machine flings a boulder half as tall as I am over the wall and into the mass of mermineae.
I can’t follow its path after it passed the wall, but I can definitely track the corpses it leaves behind. The stone rolls far further than it should, considering its arc. But that isn’t the weirdest thing. It doesn’t tear through them in a straight line. It curves far off to the left, even taking some mermineae in their sides.
“You idiot!” I hear the shout from the origin of the boulder. “Match your ammo to the enemy!” The other hunters on the weapon grumble, but got to work.
The next projectile out of the machine appears much the same at first; a stone sphere, but it quickly becomes apparent the difference between this boulder and the last. The ball splits into several flat discs that fan out as they pass the wall. Spinning at an astonishing rate, they hover through the air before the mermineae find themselves once again at the mercy of the hunters’ weaponry.
Some discs continue spinning out of the range of my sense, slicing through any not hugging the ground close enough. Others’ flight are disturbed, and tumble along the earth like runaway wheels, but still sharp and fast enough to cut.
I glance down at my spear. I’m not going to get the chance to practice, am I?
“Is it usually this easy for you?” I ask.
Grímr’s eyes finally snap away from the bloodshed before us. He looks like he wants to say something, his eyes darting between me and Atl, but keeps his silence.
“Against the yoe? Yeah, they never learn. We adapted to their swarm methods centuries ago and they’ve never thought to try anything different. But what can you expect from animals?” He shakes his head with a sigh. “The cult is a different story. The unnatural power of theirs can be rather frustrating.”
As he says that, a portion of the wall before us decays before our eyes. A concentrated effort of the Forvaal must have finally breached our defences.
“But we’ve worked on countermeasures.”
An egg-shaped contraptions launches through the new gap in the wall, obliterating the many trying to rush through. Like the first ones, this egg spins and jumps around amongst the mermineae without resistance.
Each of the rams along the wall stop. They dig into the ground and instead of moving along the fortified walls, they lift the wall and push it inward. The damaged section is ejected, and the wall locks in place, reformed. In only a few seconds, the rams are back to slamming through groups of mermineae and the breach is closed.
“But the cultists are still yoe at their core. They never learn. Never adapt.”
We stand there for a minute, just watching the never ending swarm of mermineae continue to throw themselves to their deaths. Near the edges of our lines, they try to move around us, but what appear to be far more controlled versions of the egg weapon protect our flanks. The large wheels move fast and cut off the enemy’s attempts at repositioning.
Another new siren blares from the towers behind us. Immediately, most of the hunters around us abandon the siege engines, leaving only a few to continue their operation.
Atl clambers off the side of our own. “We’ve spotted a cult leader. It’s time to leave if you don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
The hunters trigger the rest of the egg contraptions which bound over the wall as their operators flee to the rear of our formation. The hunters controlling the moving wall rams jump off and follow.
Grímr and I climb off our siege engine — which has yet to see any use — and join Atl as he flicks a lever and runs for the back towers.
Despite not having any more operators, the pistons along the wall continue to slide along and hammer through the wall.
“If you don’t need to be on them to operate, then why have any hunters manning the machines in the first place?” I ask.
“They can only run a short while with no one to operate the cranks,” Atl says and points to a ram. “If you pay attention, the piston has a repetitive pattern. Without a hunter to guide it, they need to rely on simple cycles.”
He is right. There are only three places where the ram breaks through the wall now, rotating through each in order. The Forvaal decay another hole through the wall, but the machines don’t close the gap as they did before. Mermineae flood through, still struggling to break through the barrage of projectiles.
The command towers groan as we pass them. I glance up, unsurprised to see the first stages of a transformation. The walls twist and the upper platform of stone slides outward. Even at my low angle, the long barrel is easily visible as it rises high into the air.
It is entirely made of that strange metal the centzon use. The tower rattles as the barrel stops rising. It spins as it angles down on the front line, exposing an absolutely huge contraption at the barrel’s base. Each of the commanders jump off the flat viewing platforms and take a position upon the machine.
We make it to the rear of the towers, each of which now supporting its own long barrel as an explosion erupts from the wall. The wall is well out of my sense range now, so I have to twist on my feet to see the source of the explosion.
A dust-cloud billows from a wide missing section in our defence. It’s not far from the breach left by the Forvaal, but it is easily on a far greater scale. The Viisin is finally here.
Barely visible through the smoke and ash is a silhouette of our greatest threat. The centzon have shown absolute superiority until now, but I struggle to see how they could beat this being. I saw it shrug off decapitation, after all. It jumps forward, obliterating the first siege engine on touch.
In near-perfect unison, the towers unload on the Viisin. The massive barrels launching another projectile every second, loud clanks and thunks proceeding each blast. The sustained fire from hundreds of rounds does more damage to our defences than the Viisin has yet managed.
Despite the damage it takes, it stands strong. Legs, arms, its head; it doesn’t matter what part of the Viisin’s body is annihilated, it heals through it.
It doesn’t take any permanent damage, but the continuous fire prevents it from advancing. Instead, it dashes to the side, intent on destroying much of the other defences and siege engines along our line. Some of the projectile launchers throwing spinning disks hit the Viisin, but they decay on contact with its skin, leaving no damage at all.
This isn’t all they have planned, right? It’s obviously not effective. Even if the cannons are incredibly powerful, it means nothing if we can’t kill the Viisin. I glance to Atl at my side, but he seems completely unfazed by the ineffectiveness of their weapons.
He turns to me and I look away, but I’m too late.
“Don’t worry, this is just supposed to stop the cult leader from approaching. Normal projectiles don’t work on them. We have these auto-cannons to blast it with special, pressurised capsules that explode upon impact and pelt them with shrapnel designed to decay far slower than normal. It lets us actually hurt them.”
Hundreds of mermineae rush through the new breaches made by a combination of Forvaal, Viisin and auto-cannon efforts. I now realise that many of the machines after the wall are long range, so the swarm of mermineae faces almost no opposition until they reach the siege weapon Grímr and I rode on.
The mermineae must trigger some mechanism as the — until now — unused machines now blast liquid all over the attackers.
I clench my fist. For a moment, anger bubbles in me as I realise they had me riding on the machine they’d filled with water. But that anger quickly fades as I notice the liquid is black. It’s not water.
Each of the strange liquid carrying machines starts rolling forward, pushing past the mermineae and coating them all as they pass.
Atl touches my shoulder. “I know we said to hold back, but you can go ahead for now. Try not to damage our machines, please.”
I look at him, confused, before sliding my attention to the now visible black mermineae. Unsure, I throw a stream of flame forward, careful to keep my inner flame away from the liquid. As soon as a single spark touches the black substance, everything before me engulfs in fire.
My eyes widen and I quickly shove everything into the fire. The liquid is unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s like the flammable jelly down in the tunnels, but amplified, compressed, and oh, so much more tasty. My fire spreads over everything in an instant.
My flames are pushed far hotter than they’ve ever been, glowing bright yellow, then white, then strangely, they disappear. Well, they disappear from my sight, but I know they’re still there, burning and incinerating anything they touch. It’s a struggle to hold myself back from annihilating those contraptions so inconveniently in my way.
“Don’t touch the oil-wagons,” Atl says, only barely quick enough for me to stop eating my way up the streams.
Each of the wagons now rolls past the remains of the wall, coating every mermineae it passes in my new favourite food… or, I guess, drink. That feels strange to think. I’ve never drunk anything before.
The mermineae and the Forvaal amongst them try their hardest to break the machines, but an extra thick layer of the centzon’s strange metal delays their attempts.
“How do you deal with something that can not only brush off most attacks, but will actively recover from the hits that reach them?” Atl asks suddenly.
The Viisin stops ploughing through the defences and throws itself toward the oil-wagons now deep amongst the mermineae.
“You hit them so hard they don’t have a chance to recover.”
The Viisin lands on the wagon and that’s the last thing it does. There’s a flash of light and my flame involuntarily rockets through the air, spreading with an intensity I’ve never felt. Only a moment later does the blast rattle my body.
Atl pulls me out of my stupor. He drags me under the arch of the tower, alongside Grímr and all the other centzon. After a few moments, a rain of metal shards falls from the sky. I listen to the rapid thunks as the shrapnel pelts the tower above us.
I can’t feel the Viisin anymore. Either it is dead, or it is now outside the spreading flame.
I shake off Atl’s grip and poke my head around the side of the tower. Smoke rises hundreds of metres in the air before curving outward. My flames linger within the rising clouds.
What was that? It felt more intense than being hit by Spenne’s lightning. I almost missed it, but in the fraction of a second, I felt heat near incomprehensible. Something I’ve never felt before. Lightning was similar, but there was some distinction between the feelings.
The mermineae that remain now flee. I really don’t understand how they could keep trying to overwhelm us when they saw their kin dying by the hundreds before their eyes, but at least now they give up.
Unfortunately, they flee down into the Alps. Don’t they know we are here to cut our way back to the east? They are going to die by going down there. Is their god, Kalma, really more terrifying than facing the centzon?
The memory of Hund tearing through an army is all the answer I need.
At least we know the centzon can fight off the Viisin. Hopefully, we won’t have to deal with any others until we reach home.
Huh… I guess I’ve already decided.
We’re going home.
