Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Seven – 957

“Arclights!” Loquis called in a tone to shatter rock. “Prep your volleys! Elemental Surge!”

The killing grounds outside the walls were wreathed in greasy smoke that drifted between dimly glowing shards of pockmarked stone. The last wave of enemies had been fierce and more were on the way, but for the moment his Talons had time to breathe.

The Captain of the Fiend’s Claws stood upon the Fiendstone battlements the emperor had made around their ship, flanked by hundreds of Legionnaires. The fortifications were tall and slanted outward—all but impenetrable to a conventional army. These foes, however, were anything but. Moonbeasts, possessed of shards of a goddess's moon and wreathed in shadowy flesh advanced on the walls, now only a thousand paces out.

“Ready yourselves,” Lieutenant Heva warned. The grandmother’s hands flared with bright orange Mana, coalescing into thread-thin whips of fire.

Loquis appreciated her dedication. The moonbeasts numbered in the thousands and she’d dispatched dozens—sweat covered her brow but her golden eyes were intense enough to ignite flames of their own. Her Talon was just as focused—all of the Talons were—and the sturdy song of their devotion was the bulwark upon which the captain steadied himself.

The moonbeasts roared. Even after fighting waves of them, Loquis wasn’t used to their unpredictable shapes, sizes, and powers. Some bore wide claws that clung to the Fiendstone as if it were flat ground. Others had mighty legs that allowed them to leap from the earth straight to the battlements, and a few even flew on jagged wings. Most, however, were as mindless as swarming insects.

They slammed into the walls, piling atop one another to scale the opalescent walls, like beasts after morsels of delicious food. They, unfortunately, were the food.

"Legion of Bone! Gravedigger's Wrath," Loquis called out.

A contingent of Legionnaires, a red-gold femur stitched into their cloak, spun their blunt weapons in a circle. Mana surged from their bodies as a wide, crushing arc blasted outward from the battlements, shattering the carapace of the moonbeasts and blasting them from the wall in a single, sweeping strike.

“Legion of Blade! Whirling Bladedance!”

Another Talon stepped forward, a blue-white sword stitched into their cloak. They moved in a flurry of strikes, describing a net of searing light that spiralled outward above the wall. It flashed, too fast for their enemies to track as they were caught, mid-leap. Ichor poured from the fallen, splattering the surviving moonbeasts below and collapsing the tower of clambering ants.

Loquis gestured to his left. “Legion of Fist! Thunderous Barrage!”

Men and women, each with a clenched fist emblazoned on their cloaks, lifted their heavy-spiked gauntlets and punched into the air. A wave of compression was followed by a hardened crack of thunder that tore creatures from the air and toppled a few of the larger creatures charging the wall. Shadowflesh burst into ichor and greasy smoke.

“Earthshaker Stomp!”

Mithril boots slammed into the battlements in perfect unison, forcing a ripple of light through the Fiendstone. Force that would have demolished even high Tier stone was instead redirected, pushed outward through its foundations. It flared into a song of defense that hurled back any monsters within fifty paces.

“Arclights! Now’s the time!” Loquis threw his hand forward, his own power mustering. “Bring the pain! Elemental Conflux!”

Mana howled from the mages decked out in lightning-embroidered cloaks—the largest of the Legions. Raw elemental force blasted outward in sweeping strikes that altered the very terrain. Ashen earth was by turns set ablaze, bathed in choking acid, scoured with razor winds, and flash-frozen by impenetrable ice. Elemental Conflux cut narrow swathes out of the battlefield, and each mage ended the lives of dozens before their power faded.

The moonbeast wave was gone—but more were on the way.

“Fiend’s wrath,” Loquis snarled as a massive moonbeast stomped forward. Its hands were the size of a Human, and they were covered in more moonshards than he’d seen on any other beast. “Brace!”

It charged sideways like an ape and brought its spiked fists down upon the wall. Legionnaires all along the battlements rocked backward, but wards flared, pushing back the beast. Lieutenant Heva stretched out her whips, but Loquis stopped her.

“I’ll handle it.”

The grandmother frowned. “As you wish.”

Loquis lifted his hand and from his center a storm of power gathered. “Stormlance!”

Lightning leapt to his hand—blue-white and solid as if made of actual metal—and in the same motion hurled it forward. The Stormlance fired with a crash of calamitous thunder, heavier than anything the Legion of Fist produced. It sheared directly through the moonbeast's slobbering head, obliterating its skull and boiling its ichor.

You Have Killed A Moonbeast Anomaly!

XP Earned!

It fell back with a crash and was instantly cannibalized by its allies, its moonshards passing onto them, making them all the more stronger.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Wipe ‘em out!” Heva brought her Smoldering Hydra down and cut through two more beasts. The rest of the Talons followed. Attacks rang out into the dark, Skills setting the night alight, eradicating the no-man’s land just beyond the wall as the inexhaustible sweep of monstrosities refilled itself again and again.

"Captain." Heva pointed, voice shaking. "Look."

Loquis’ eyes widened. “The Echo…”

He’d heard the emperor name the thing before their fight had taken them far away from the ship, but now the creature had returned. It charged at them, beyond gigantic—a single swipe of its claws could eradicate their entire fortification. Only, it no longer had claws. The thing had taken on the form of a semi-liquid cloud, rolling ahead on half-formed limbs that pounded the ashen earth into muddied flurries of broken stone and crushing any moonbeasts it happened upon.

“Precision Mines!” The Unbound Lizard made hurling gestures and explosions hounded the Echo’s fluid sides, blowing sizzling chunks from it. The thing stumbled aside, driven into the cliffs before it was surrounded by rapidly growing bars of Fiendstone.

“Blow up the mountain!” the emperor shouted.

“But—”

“Do it!”

The Lizard’s orange and blue scales flared, gleaming as waves of near-solid Mana poured from his huge feet. Points of molten light lit up the cliffs just above the trapped Echo before erupting into a cascade of fire and stone.

The cliff collapsed, trapping the Echo’s semi-solid cloud.

It did nothing for the horde of moonbeasts at its feet. Those rushed the battlements, far larger and more savage than the one’s they’d faced before. Some were even taller than the fifty-foot walls themselves.

"If they get here, they'll overwhelm us instantly.” Loquis pitched his voice off the wall. “Battlelord Ari! Now's your time."

"Yes. As it must be." The twenty-five-foot-tall Frost Giant smashed his red ice club into a shield of black iron. He climbed the ramp on the inside of the wall, followed by over a hundred of his fellow Risi Berserkers, all clad in gleaming red ice armor and possessed of a frothing energy that spilled from their mouths and poured crimson from their eyes.

“My Berserkers and the Kingsrock Coven are at your call, Captain.” The Battlelord towered over everyone else as the moonbeasts pounded ever closer. “The Kyria has put her trust in your arm. Aim us, Consort.”

“Consort?” Loquis sputtered. “Did she—she called me that?”

“Captain!” Heva snapped. “They come.”

“Right.” Loquis swallowed. “Your challenge awaits, Battlelord.”

Ari grinned, his white beard whipping in the wind. “Death charges us. As it always must.” He lifted his club. “We take the fight beyond the walls! Rua taka thun! Ia rata!”

“Ia rata!” The Berserkers cheered back, their native tongue as harsh as the Hoarfrost they hailed from, before all of them leaped directly off the walls.

They were on their feet and running in an instant, weapons already swinging through the smaller horde at the fore. Around them, ice poured into the earth, freezing the ground and locking the weakest in place just long enough for the Berserkers to tear through them. Moonbeasts shattered while others were churned into paste, and the giants shot ahead, deeper into the horde and the titanic foes that howled in mindless glee.

Those clawed and stomped at the giants, but Ari smashed its paws away. The serpentine creature fell back and wound tore open beneath his crushing club. From behind Loquis, spells seared through the sky. Four dozen Witches stood behind his Legion, each of them ten feet tall, their gowns flowing in cold arctic breezes as their white hair rippled under the backlash of their power. Hexes flew from their fingertips, crashing into the beasts, entering through their wounds, rotting flesh and fouling their steps out of true. They stumbled to the ground where the Berserkers crushed their bones and gouged out their eyes with brutal efficiency, each strike coating the monsters in crimson ice that wormed through joints and soft places.

The titans fell, but more remained.

Pathetic, Fiend. You Cannot Stop Me.

Loquis clenched his jaw; the Echo was free.

It surged through the cracks in stone, stuttering through the emperor’s restraints with a burr of noise that made his people flinch back. It fell, oozing across the earth and where it touched the moonbeasts it dissolved them, absorbing their flesh and moonshards into itself. A number of giants fell, their bodies torn to pieces by the Echo's sheer might. Their Essence ripped free and blue swirled among the black.

"Ari, Retreat!" Loquis called. "Fall back to the wall!"

The Berserkers were too far gone to listen to reason. They charged, attacking the beasts that remained, while the rest slammed their clubs into the ground, sending waves of red ice into the Echo. The ooze froze for a moment before breaking free as it reformed into something approaching a person. Multiple limbs slammed to the ground and swatted the giants away.

"Precision Mines!"

New explosions sounded, these not on the ground, but on the creature's Body itself. It was hurled back, and the force of it nearly hurled Loquis and his Talons from the wall. He clung on, lifting his head just in time to see the Echo round on the Lizard.

Unbound! Anathema!

“The name’s Wendell.” The Lizard unsheathed two enormous swords that blazed with waves of yellow heat and white-green wind. “And I’m an engineer!”

He swung both swords together and an explosion blossomed a hundred strides ahead of him as the Mana met and clashed. The Echo hissed through its empty face, but the Lizard wasn’t done. Each slash was a conflagration, clouds of flame tearing into the creature, burning away the dark. The Echo’s head snapped back, but strangely, it threw its chest forward.

What—?

A collection of moonshards arranged in a circle led the way, meeting the mighty explosions. The Lizard didn’t stop, and the Echo howled in pain.

Something snapped.

A glimmer of gold caught Loquis’ eye, and one of the massive moonshards fell away from the Echo’s flesh. It screamed, but through the agony came a dark glee.

"No!" Felix rushed in, his cry thunder in itself, announcing him before the lightning that crashed him fist-first into Noctis' empty face. The creature fell back, stumbling away from the ship and Loquis' people. "Not its chest!"

Loquis clutched the battlements hard enough to crack his nails. Looming above them, pieces of the Echo had started to unravel, like paint peeling from a wall. The pieces lifted up, dissolving into smoke, as a cackling laugh shook the air.

The thing was happy.

His emperor stood on a bolt of lightning before it, tall and proud, his coat snapping in the wild winds and his voice as clear as if he were standing next to Loquis.

"Oh, shit."