Preemptive Conclusion

Both of my parents were up next as the head priest hurried back along with the fire noble, who was busy chugging an absurdly large potion. It was more of a beer mug than a potion bottle, but he was downing it all the same while being walked by the ancient priest. It was an almost comical scene.

My mother and father were combining their preferred elements, my father gesturing either side of the highway to split open into wide crevasses that continued splitting all of the way down to the wall. The goblin honor guards still off to the sides and the undead now rushing in toward the road were being upset and captured in these two ten-foot wide miniature canyons.

My mother played her part by casting out a whirls of water from her hands not unlike the fire tornadoes from the noble. However, these cyclones of water rushed into the crevasse with rock-crushing pressure to widen the canyons as well as pulverize the undead inside. The undead themselves had probably been called in to act as a meat shield for a final desperate push on the trench, but they only ended up helping to fill the canyons.

By the time the canyons overflowed with a darkened muck, the fire noble and head priest had almost reached our halfway point and my parents were surveying their work. We had had not only dropped their numbers by a few tenths, we had cut off their retreat and then isolated the leaders from their troops. Even now they were only just responding to the new development, redirecting their undead straight for the trench for a broadened frontal assault.

Despite their various sizes, the abominations were actually pretty well coordinated and swift on the ground, leaving the lesser meat shields behind. Now, though, the Guild officials in the preemptive were stepping up as a ground And laying down a barrage of small but rapid-fire fireballs that easily and quickly covered the shrinking distances. This small group of people maintained a steady sweeping of magical attacks back and forth across the enemy front lines.

The people brought down the same numbers I had initially imagined the entire lines of archers would drop. However, it took them about ten seconds to take out a few hundred apiece and not long after that they were completely spent. As soon as they stopped firing, though, a single horn was blown from closer to town on the highway and our army immediately responded.

Well over a thousand archers stepped out into positions and began loosing well over a thousand arrows out toward the trench to meet the undead. Our front ranks loosed calls of orders and cheers as the shield bearers started advancing toward the trench. The battle was beginning in full, but I honestly did not expect it to take long.

Over a third of the enemy's undead and most of the original tribe was dead, now all that remained was a few dozen honor guards and the platform charging slowly behind them with a roaring ogre and his necromancers. We had already won. Everything after this was basically clean-up, all we had to do now was wait on the leaders to be killed off.

By the time the undead neared the trench, hundreds more had fallen to arrows. The undead had been pretty much halved at this point, almost bringing our two sides to equal numbers. Despite being slowed by the hallowed ground surrounding the trench, though, many of the undead blindly threw themselves into the trench.

They were making a bridge of attrition.

Even though it looked like they would continuously sacrifice their undead all along the trench, once a stable enough pile of bodies had been formed they all rushed into those few points. Just as dozens of undead were finally crossing the trench from three different places, hundreds of arrows streamed down on this location as the shield wall finally came to a stop forty or so yards from the trench.

As much damage as this did swiftly to lessen the overall numbers it also added bodies to the bridges so that more and more undead could cross at a time. After only a few moments of this, the undead were finally sluggishly forcing their way to the opposite side of the trench before falling to the ground. Even this sluggishness began to fade, though, as the leader and necromancers grew closer and closer to the front lines.

In about a minute after the first abomination or lesser crossed the trench, the first gruesome creatures were approaching the front lines as more and more streams of arrows began focusing on slowing the approach of the goblin leaders. Most of these arrows never reached the platform, though, as the necromancers relieved of animating the undead redirected their attention to deflecting arrows with headwinds and dark bursts of energy.

With such heavy losses, I was surprised they had never retaliated through magic. The analogy that Old Man had used was probably accurate, they had a simple but sizable group of magic users who were roughly the same strength as me. While I was naturally gifted in magic through my affinities, my mana pool was only roughly equal to a young adult's who had spent much of their lives practicing magic and training.

This was an immense head start for my age, but my mother was a few times stronger than I was. I knew my own limitations fairly well, even if they had recharged or saved enough mana for defensive action like this it would not last very long. All of us from the hero stand were maintaining a halfway point between the soldiers and the trench, waiting to see what else we could manage to counter whatever death throes the enemy throws at us.

So far, it did not seem like they would be able to with no less than three hundred archers focusing fire on the highway, but their progress was not slowed either. Depending on the type and class of undead, they would have a store of mana keeping them functional, but to maintain thousands while marching and charging and STILL have this much mana. They exceeded my expectations.

They were almost literally twice my mana pool in strength. To me, this was downright ungodly to see in wild magic users of a lesser sentience. Nobody else, even Gryn, seemed surprised by this though.

I was already back up to just above sixty-percent of my mana pool, but the leader platform and remaining elites were already nearing their side of the trench. The trench was already mostly full of undead bodies and muck in their area, the mounts carrying the platform simply dragged each other forward. Snow white steam rose up from around the undead bodies as they swam on the stakes, burning them away with magical waters in hallowed ground.

For a brief instant, behind the wall of shadowed mana they deflected arrows with, there was a sudden flaring of someone's aura like shaded flames. "Kids, you're up," the fire noble barks softly and quickly, triggering Gryn into breathing deeply and throwing his arms forward with his exhalation. Not unlike the mana wind generated by the head priest to restore the laborers, a sudden gale of strong winds rushed forward to meet the sail-like wall of mana even as the platform touched the opposite side of the trench.

No sooner were the mounts bounced back from striking the raised ground were they suddenly dunked down into the water as the two-headed behemoth they were carrying stepped forward and leaped onto our side of the trench. Even in thirty-plus miles per hour of headwind the ogre's immense body completely cleared the twenty yards of embankment behind the trench. From the platform behind his distraction suddenly formed a small storm cloud of crackling black beads of energy.

These little beads of darkened electricity were charging lightning bolts drawing mana until they had enough charge to cross the distance. As the ogre made another, smaller leap, not only I but the archers realized the ogre was shielding the platform with its body. "I need your wisps," I say briefly, resonating a sudden ripple of magical energy that draws out not only his darkened wisps but also my own shrunken behemoths.

Now that they had learned how to shrink, they were relearning how to grow and would randomly swell up to their full size every few seconds. Gryn's were still in the shrinking stage and were the size of large melons, but compared to the sudden growths of my wisps his own appeared to be dwarves. At the sight of these dark elemental entities, the ogre actually stuttered in his prolonged landing against the headwind Gryn was fueling everything he had into.

To fight the ogre, I did not think I would need much more than to be able to quickly draw and sheathe my sword, but as the beads of light grew larger above the platform I had to be quick on my feet. Tapping into Gryn's wisps who had been generated from mana field constructed from my magic, I drain not only them but my own wisps into my mana pool while forcibly expanding them to their largest possible size.

Willing my wisps to start spinning around each other ontil they looked like a large black disc, I guide Gryn's wisps by hand to spin in the same direction around the person-sized black disc. Spinning them faster and faster, I forcibly tap into Gryn himself and feed the energy collected from our wisps to him in surplus to suddenly expand the strength of his winds. With the immense air currents blowing conductive air away from us, I had more than enough time to move the spinning shield of wisps before his hands while taking over the wind entirely.

With Gryn supplying the wind into our wisps, the blunt wall of wind soon became a focused tornado of empty energy. Once the tornado was formed, I canceled out Gryn's magic and immediately reversed both rotations to start sucking instead of blowing. The first beads of light were charged and the ogre was near enough that the archers could no longer safely target it.

My parents were just stepping off to either side of the group to engage the ogre with ranged wind and fire when the dark lightning flashed through the air towards us. Once they left the caster and entered the newly inverted vortex, these black lightning bolts all zeroed in toward the center. Straight into our hungry wisps who greedily consumed the dark elements.

Draining the wisps as they ate to keep the conversion process smooth, I flood mana through my connection to Gryn and call out, "Once they start coming in full, throw everything you get at that ogre!" Almost as soon as I stopped talking, more beads of electricity began firing bolts into the vortex. The consumption and conversion of mana had been downright sketchy at best when they first started firing, now the intake was beginning to exceed my already loose control.

In just a few seconds, Gryn had taken in all that his natural mana pool would allow and I was forced to cut my connection with him and tap break the seal on my scabbard. This was dangerous enough because the void's intake might exceed both the conversion and consumption to break down the vortex, but almost as if expecting my retaliation as the use of my sword over half of the charged beads began firing.

"Now, Gryn!" I call out, cutting my own intake from the wisps and diverting everything into my scabbard. As soon as the signal was called, my parents who had been widening out to keep the ogre distracted and pinned down ended their attacks and began retreating as Gryn unleashed his stockpile.

Multiple sonic booms threatened to knock us all off of our feet as three massive lances of forking black lightning burst forth from Gryn's hands off to the side of the wisps. These bolts of lightning all closed in on the ogre who, battered, burnt, and dazed as he was still managed to duck down and shield himself with his arms.

Just as I had hoped, not only did the stockpile of enemy magic pack enough punch to blow pieces off of the ogre and send it flying back to the embankment but also the use of their own magic shocked the enemy necromancers into a ceasefire. Once the last bolt was consumed by the wisps and fed to my scabbard, I dispersed the shrunken and tired familiars and fully unsheathed my short sword. I did not even add any of my own power to it.

I simply slashed my sword just as I had the first time and unleashed its pent up energy in a kinetic slash. The ogre whose main head was lolled back and little head was shrieking hysterically was struggling up on shattered limbs in an attempt to take the attack. The growing crescent of darkened energy did not even stop as it swept by, cleanly dividing the top and bottom halves of the ogre before continuing on low to the ground to sweep through the embankment.

I expected the slash to just keep going, but once again the brilliant energy of my attack disappeared once meeting the trench and the trench burned with its own blessed energies. Smoke, steam, and screams rose up not only from the highway section of trench but from all across the battleground as the bridges of bodies and the undead crosing them were seared away. Nothing within the trench made it out, and after a few moments the hundreds remaining on the opposite side just started stopping in place and then collapsing.

The necromancers had died in the trench.

*