Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (27 page)

I followed her to the top and channeled a shield to protect us as another volley of glass spheres slammed into the parapets.

"You weren't kidding," she said in an awed voice. "How in the world do they have so many battle mages?" She stared out at them, eyes narrowed in concentration.

"Some of them might be plain old Arcanes," I said. "But with that many people throwing magic at us, it really doesn't matter."

"Battle mages are the elite combat Arcanes," Elyssa said. "I know from my studies there's a huge difference between them and normal Arcanes." She shook her head. "You're right, though. With that many people using magic, it doesn't—" She broke off, eyes focusing on something. "That's weird."

"What is?" I followed her gaze and saw one of the attackers walking toward us, or so it seemed at first glance. When I watched more closely, I realized the man was walking in place.

"Look there." Elyssa pointed out a man, his body partly inside one of the scraggly trees on the wide plain beyond the wall. "That army isn't entirely real."

"Illusions," I said. "They're faking their numbers!"

"The vampires seemed real enough," Elyssa said.

"Vampires are easier to make," I growled. "They knew if we saw a massive army of mages we wouldn't leave the walls to attack them."

"That gave them all the opening they needed to get the interdictor in place." She pressed her lips together. "If you look closely, you can tell which ones are fake."

It only took me a moment to confirm. The illusions shimmered ever so slightly, and if I zoomed my gaze on them, I could see they were translucent. From a distance they looked real, and that was all the enemy had needed. "We need to know how many there really are."

Elyssa took out what looked like a pair of spectacles, but which were actually the Templar version of binoculars. She scanned the army while I bolstered the shield for another impact. The next volley of projectiles flew over the wall and slammed into the courtyard, just shy of the retreated Templars.

"They're using all-seeing eyes," Elyssa said. "So simple but brilliant." She handed me the spectacles.

I spotted several of the marble-sized spheres. Each one was projecting the image of a battle mage. "Can we deactivate them?"

She tapped her chin. "ASEs are susceptible to electro-magical pulses."

"Like a magical EMP?"

"Exactly." She surveyed the field. "They should have some grenades in the armory. We might be able to throw them far enough to make it over the shields and into their forces."

"You show me the grenades, and I can hit the targets."

"Follow me." We ran back down to the courtyard. Elyssa questioned the closest Templar and he pointed us in the direction of the armory. The inside of the large stone warehouse looked like it had been hit with a bomb. I saw rows of destroyed aether generators, and several racks of molten weapons. My heart sank when we reached the place where the Templar had told us to find explosive ordinance and found a big hole in the ground instead.

"Son of a—argh!" Elyssa kicked a rock. "I'd love to vivisect the asshole who did this."

I spotted a stack of toppled and singed wooden crates on one side of the hole and jogged over to them. A group of brown ones were labeled
Soggers
. A set of white crates bore the name
Icers
. "What are these?"

"They're useless," Elyssa said in an exasperated voice. "Soggers make the ground wet and muddy. Icers make the ground icy. Everything in these boxes are used for environmental training, not for warfare."

"How muddy does it make the ground?" I asked, taking one of the brown grenades from a box.

She showed me a dial on the side that went from "Damp" to "Swampy". A light seemed to come on in her eyes. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If you're thinking about pancakes and bacon, then yes."

She rolled her eyes. "Save the jokes for after we survive this."

"I'm not joking. I'm starving!" I hefted two brown crates of the grenades. "But I'm also thinking we might be able to take the ground out from under our attackers."

"Each grenade covers a ten-yard radius," she said.

"Grab the icers too," I said, my eyes scanning other nearby boxes.

Elyssa tucked a white crate under one arm and a green one under her other arm. We ran back toward the north wall, stopping in the courtyard where Templars had arranged their few remaining aether generators in a protective circle to shield survivors. Sounds of battle still echoed from the other walls where presumably, the vampires were still attacking.

"Send more people to grab as many of these crates as possible," I told Mom when I saw her.

A loud hum vibrated the air and my skin tingled. The hum deepened and faded within seconds, but the affects didn't. I tried to channel a trickle of aether and felt nauseating pain bite me.

Ivy gagged. Tears pooled in her eyes. "Is the interdictor doing this?"

"It's on," I said. "We've got to hurry. They'll be rushing the walls any minute now."

Elyssa and I reached the top of the battlements. The mages had redirected their catapults at the massive doors guarding the castle. Explosions rocked the walls. I'd planned to use magic to fling the grenades at the attackers, but that was out the window now. I just hoped my throwing arm was up to the challenge.

I pried open the crate of soggers and grabbed a couple, twisting the dials to the maximum setting and then pulling the dial out to arm it. They felt metallic and cold in my hand. "How long until they activate?"

"Ten seconds," Elyssa said. "You shouldn't need to cook them."

I stood and threw the one in my hand, having already wasted several seconds. My aim was awful, and it hit one of the shields near the front line, bounced off, and landed on the brown grass. The reddish dirt beneath the grass darkened, bubbled, and abruptly turned into a mud pit even a Templar might think twice about before crossing. The wagon supporting a nearby shield generator listed to the side and began to sink.

"That's it," I said. Originally I'd planned to sink the mages, but this might work even better. "Aim for the shield generators first, and then hit the ground next to the interdictor."

Mom and Ivy appeared at my side, each one bearing a box of soggers. I told them the plan. The four of us began hurling the grenades all along the front lines as fast as we could set the dials. The battle mages didn't seem to realize what was happening at first since the grenades didn't explode.

Several shield generators began sinking into the morass as the entire front line turned into a bog. One of the mages shot fire at the mud, as if hoping to bake it back to solidity before the generator sank for good. I switched to incubus vision and saw the shield cover for the interdictor quickly vanishing into the muck.

"Aim for the Tesla coil," I said. We launched another volley.

Shimmering shapes caught the corner of my eye and I noticed a wave of explosive spheres flying our way. Ivy clenched her fists as if to blast them and abruptly dropped to her knees, dry heaving. We needed a shield, but the portable generator we'd been using earlier was farther down the wall.

"Crucibles incoming," Elyssa said.

"Run!" I shouted, grabbing Ivy beneath one arm and a crate of soggers in the other. I blurred down the wall walk, looking back to see Mom and Elyssa right behind as the section of wall where we'd been turned into a blue inferno.

I reached the aether generator and realized the entire backside of it was molten goo. We had no way to protect ourselves. Looking down at the field of battle, I saw the attackers rotating the catapults to aim for our new position.
We don't need a shield.
"We're going to have to keep moving." I set down Ivy. "Don't try to use magic. You'll only make yourself sick."

"Boy and how," she said in a whiny voice. "I'm going to burn those bad men up when I get my powers back."

"No time to waste," Elyssa said, taking aim at the interdictor. "We throw and run."

The four of us aimed and let loose. The soggers landed on the ground around and beneath the device. Unfortunately, there was an obvious issue we hadn't considered.

"Mother McGuffin!" I shouted. "It doesn't matter how soggy the ground is, the interdictor is on a flying carpet."

Elyssa raised an eyebrow. "That's why I've been aiming for the carpet itself."

We grabbed our boxes of supplies and ran back the way we'd come as the mages fired crucibles on our new position.

"What good will soaking the carpet do?" I asked when we reached our new position.

"Keep hitting the rug and you'll see." Elyssa threw two more.

The rest of us aimed for the new target and let fly. The massive flying carpet dripped with water, but otherwise seemed unaffected. I looked at the catapults and saw the mages aiming them so the spheres would hit all along the wall instead of one position. "If we don't deactivate the Tesla coil soon, we won't have anywhere left to run."

Elyssa opened the box of icers. "Throw as many as you can."

The small white grenades didn't have dials, just buttons to trigger the fuse. The four of us lobbed them as quickly as we could at the carpet. We might have thrown five each when the catapults flung their deadly loads at us. I tried to gauge their trajectory, looking for a safe spot for us to run. The nearest set of ramps was too far away to reach before the crucibles hit. The projectiles were spaced tightly enough to bombard the entire section of wall fifty yards in either direction. There would be no safe spot to stand. The concussion from the blasts would still hit us. We might not die, but we'd be thrown from the wall or put out of commission for a while.

I gripped a sogger, twisted the dial, and counted down from ten.

"Should we run?" Ivy asked.

"Nowhere to go," Elyssa said.

The closest sphere was almost on us.

"Five, four, three—" I threw the sogger and prayed my aim was true. The grenade pierced the outer shell of the projectile.

I gripped Mom, Ivy, and Elyssa in my arms, shielding them with my body as the shimmering sphere slammed into the wall walk only feet away from us. A wave of water slammed into my back. Cold water ran down the neck of my Templar armor, causing me to dance in place. "Cold! Cold! Cold!"

I looked up at Elyssa and saw quite clearly thanks to the sheer Templar armor that she was also a little chilly. The blood from her fights with the vampire horde ran in thin trickles down her armor, forming a pink puddle at her feet.

Mom squeezed water from her blonde hair. "Quick thinking, son."

Ivy giggled. "It was like a huge water balloon!"

Elyssa pointed toward the Tesla coil. "I think it's working."

Icicles hung from the carpet supporting the large device. It sagged slowly to the side, apparently unable to keep level with an extra hundred pounds or so hanging from that edge. With a loud crash the entire apparatus toppled to the side, sending small tidal waves of muck flying in all directions. Some of the illusionary mages blinked out.

"I think the mud coated some of the ASEs," Elyssa said. "They can't project holograms."

A blinding flash of aether sparked, sending waves of electricity arcing through the wet ground. The blast wave knocked dozens of battle mages back, while others—apparently illusions—simply blinked out of existence. The unsettling tingle of the interdictor field lifted.

"Looks like the interdictor took out the rest of those pesky ASEs," I said even as more of the holograms vanished while the stricken Tesla coil sent out intermittent sparks. By the time the smoke and mud cleared, I counted only a few dozen real people on the field.

"They really pulled one over on us," Elyssa said. "They knew we had the numbers to stop them."

"So they put in a cheat code and used illusions to keep us from charging them." I watched as a stunned attacker tried to stand but kept stumbling back onto the soggy ground. Other unmoving bodies lay near the fizzling interdictor. Movement at the back lines caught my gaze as the catapults lined up for another shot. "They don't know when to give up."

"I think it's time for a face-to-face meeting," Mom said as she cracked her knuckles.

Ivy mimicked her, narrowing her blue eyes and trying to crack her knuckles to no audible effect. "Time for some payback."

A look of concern flashed across Elyssa's face, but she quickly covered it. "We should probably take prisoners if at all possible."

"Whatever we're gonna do, we'd better do it fast," I said as another hailstorm of crucibles flew through the air.

Ivy and I destroyed several orbs with blasts of Brilliance, but the rest slammed into the castle. A large section of wall crumbled as it finally gave in to the brutal assault. Our group raced down the ramps to the inner courtyard.

Commander Taylor intercepted us at the bottom. "We're barely holding the vampires at bay. There are simply too many of them."

"We have a chance to stop the battle mages," I said. "We need the front sally port opened."

Her eyes widened. "There are hundreds of them. Why the bloody hell would you go out there?"

"I'll explain on the way to the exit." I motioned toward the main fortress gates. To the right was a reinforced tunnel with a heavy steel door in it—the sally port if I had to guess.

"Very well." She jogged toward it while I updated her on our battle.

"They're stunned but they still have those catapults." I looked up as several more spheres whooshed past overhead.

Mom channeled a thin beam of Brilliance and lanced several of the explosives like giant boils.

"I hope you're right," Taylor said. "Most of the vampires are concentrated at the south wall, so they won't see you, but there are sapper groups trying to blow up the east wall. If they see you, more vampires may swarm your position."

"Let's be quick about it then." I led the way through the tunnel and through the sally port. From ground level, the battlefield looked like a debris-strewn swamp. We dodged the bogs we'd made with soggers and ran around the still sparking remains of the interdictor. I hoped we could salvage it and take it apart after this was over.