Chapter 99

“We have a go. The Vultoqi are now fully engaged with both groups,” Adsila informed us as we waited somewhat impatiently to get on with our job.

“At last,” I nodded with a sigh.

“Yep,” Xi agreed.

“Before we start, this is for you,” I said to Oonagh as I handed over Soul-drinker to her.

“My sword?”

“Yes. Yours to keep, assuming we survive this.”

“Thank you,” she replied, looking somewhat confused, but holding the scabbarded sword to her chest as if it might be snatched away at any second.

“You’re welcome,” I nodded. “Everyone ready?”

I got a series of replies and thumbs up from the Team. “Let’s go stop this thing,” I finally said as Adsila opened a hidden portal for us.

We came out a mile in front of the echtra, all of us able to passively sense the battle some distance off. The Drow swiftly cloaked, including Oonagh’s bodyguards, and ghosted off to do their part in guiding us safely to the echtra itself. After fifteen minutes we set off after them, Adok and Szymon leading the way, with Nell and Daniel providing the rear-guard.

“Detecting a ghosin,” Adsila said quietly. “Have marked its position for the Drow, we need to divert around it on this path,” she showed us mentally.

“No adelshaut?” Róisín asked.

“None at all.”

“Love it when a plan comes together,” she replied with a slight giggle.

“Well, we aren’t there yet, but yes, good news so far,” I agreed.

Other than Adsila detecting a few ghosin still guarding approaches to the echtra, progress was relatively swift within the bounds of moving silently, avoiding the occasional detection scan emanating from the echtra itself.

Finally we reached the echtra, the slightly glowing shield itself impervious to our scanning, though we could scan, albeit somewhat imperfectly, through anyone inside it. Adsila then began to create the bubble necessary to merge with it for us to pass through.

“Let’s go,” she said finally, as the Drow temporarily uncloaked and walked carefully through and into the weird paradise the Vultoqi maintained for their patripures.

Once inside, the Drow immediately cloaked to form an outer guard perimeter, whilst Adok, Szymon, Nell and Daniel went off for a look around, just to ensure we weren’t walking into a situation. The rest of us formed an inner perimeter around Oonagh who, we all knew, was the one person we needed to survive to get within range with the deceitful weapon.

“This whole place feels so very wrong,” Oonagh stated quietly as we waited for word from Adok and Nell.

“It’s a memory given form and is made real by the sheer will of the patripure. It’s also much larger on the inside than the outside as they’ve used quantum entanglement to extend its borders past what we consider to be the basic three dimensions,” Adsila explained.

“I see, very clever and not something I could do,” Oonagh nodded as she, like us, passively scanned the area.

“Or humanity either,” Adsila admitted. “Well, not yet. My sisters are working on a means to do it, but it is likely to take centuries.”

‘Nothing but a lot of weird creatures enjoying the environment, ‘ came a message from Adok.

‘Same here, ‘ from Nell.

“Which way?” I asked Adsila.

“That way,” she pointed mentally for us. We slipped into the almost jungle-like growth of the echtra on a path to get to the patripure.

“The enemy resists strongly,” the senior adelshaut informed the caveatra.

“They are desperate. They see their doom falling upon them,” one of the patripures replied.

“We have broken through several times, only for the adelshaut to fall to this enemy’s bladed weapons.”

“They outnumber us that much?”

“No, my patripure. They are incredibly skilled and cut the adelshaut down as easily as we strip the troichin fields to replant for another season,” the adelshaut admitted.

There was silence. The patripure had never imagined such a thing before. Yes, individual adelshaut had been taken down by a blade before, but never in a group ... as far as they knew.

“It matters not, we shall prevail,” the senior patripure finally stated.

“WE SHALL PREVAIL! WE SHALL PREVAIL!”

Though the echtra was a relatively easy terrain to move through, we were going cautiously as we didn’t know for certain which creatures might be tied directly to the patripures or possibly a stray adelshaut, though Adsila could detect none of those except for a small group with the patripures.

Hence we moved slowly towards the centre of Vultoqi power, simply waiting for Oonagh to tell us if we were within range, something she couldn’t tell us distance-wise but would know when she reached it.

“How far to the patripures?” Kate asked Adsila.

“Ten miles, as the crow flies.”

“Damn, wish we were closer. Our friends are fighting and dying out there.”

“We can’t rush this part,” I said quietly.

“I know, but they’re depending on us!”

“As soon as I can, I’ll release the spell,” Oonagh added. “But at the moment I can’t even detect them.”

“We know, friend Oonagh,” Tu’tar replied with the Mazdani hand sign of agreement.

“We do,” I agreed. “Now let’s get going.”

The battle at the edge of the echtra was pretty much a stalemate, though both sides saw this to their advantage. The Vultoqi, because they outnumbered the Allies by a fair margin; the Allies because, whilst the Vultoqi were concentrating on them, they weren’t looking around to see what was really happening.

Yet casualties were mounting for the Allies. The Vultoqi were able to approach far closer than they would ordinarily be allowed to due to the jumble of debris from the former city of Grmmar. Hence they were able to engage the Allies directly, including the use of their troichin egg plasma grenades. Fortunately the Mages at least were able to shield the troops from a lot of this. But not all. The adelshaut were very strong Mages themselves as well as being very good shots with their plasma pistols.

Roxanne’s group had done sterling work in dealing with any breakthroughs, as had a small team of Gorgons, but as the Vultoqi pressure increased, they were starting to be run ragged. The small command team under Kordanta though were reasonably satisfied as casualties were lower than expected. They were also pleased that the Drow were withdrawing in good order from their ambush site, though Birry and Tenklar were, so far, refused permission to approach and try to draw off some of their attackers. Athena remained at the original ambush site, though out of phase and was keeping the Vultoqi from using any portals in the area for a radius of over a hundred miles.

The Seers and the Psiontials were engaged in their own form of magical warfare as they looked to confuse and confound the Vultoqi’s attempts to break through the Allied line, whilst avoiding the efforts of the patripures to extinguish them. In this the adelshaut had used the Object of Power, the Sword of Tyrsis, that had once been the hand weapon of Sarkal to disrupt the wards the Allies were using around their lodgement. However, as the Allies were mostly dug in and not using ward driven shields, it so far had been of very limited success. Even so the pressure from the Vultoqi was unceasing and Kordanta knew it was only a matter of time before their position became untenable and he’d have to activate the emergency evacuation plan or what Roxanne insisted on calling the ‘go to hell’ plan, which, essentially, it was as things would be going to hell when he called for it.

‘Detecting adelshaut ahead, ‘ Adok warned us on the wolf mental channel which we knew the Vultoqi did not scan and hence was the one we’d chosen to use for all operations.

‘Can we avoid?‘ I sent back.

‘Not sure, give us a few minutes.‘

‘You got it, ‘ I replied raising my hand to call a halt and sending out a stop message to the Drow.

It was a long ten minutes before we got a message from Szymon that we could proceed, as well as an indicated direction. We soon picked up the adelshaut ourselves as they were crooning over a troichin plantation and obviously mentally encouraging them to grow ... or, as Xi suspected, to put them under Vultoqi control. Still, as vulnerable as they were, we needed to press on towards where I was now detecting a nexus of power, a very powerful nexus at that.

“Oonagh?” I asked quietly.

“Not close enough yet,” she replied, also as quietly.

“Let’s go,” I nodded and we set off again.

The route the wolves were directing us down was a spiral and was avoiding several adelshaut, including a few that were armed and heading towards the boundary of the echtra and presumably our friends. Yet we circled ever inwards, and the tension grew as we were forced to pass ever closer to various adelshaut. I suspected the only reason we weren’t caught was that they presumed that no enemy could be in the echtra this close to the patripures and hence weren’t scanning. Finally, we reached a remote rock outcropping that took us up a few hundred feet. We were able to look out over a large grassed clearing where fifty huge Vultoqi were weaving sinuously, surrounded by over a hundred adelshaut.

“Think we’ve found them,” I forced a chuckle, feeling the tension somewhat.

“Yes,” Róisín agreed.

“Are we close enough?” Clara asked.

“Yes, I think so,” came the reply from Oonagh.

“You think so?”

“It’s not like anyone’s tried this before. It feels right though.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

“Prepare a defensive perimeter,” I ordered. “We don’t know how long this will take and Oonagh doesn’t need distractions when she begins.”

The wolves, Drow and the Nosferatu drifted off into the scrub to prepare ambushes, whilst we carefully dug a few foxholes and piled up scrub to camouflage our positions. Tu’tar positioned himself next to Oonagh as the last line of defence whilst Elpida snuggled in next to me in the point position.

“Ready,” Oonagh said quietly, then began.

There was chaos along the Allied line as the Vultoqi pressed home their numerical advantage. The firing was non-stop and the casualties were mounting. The medic Mages and their Gorgon guardians were struggling to cope as the stream of casualties, mostly from plasma burns, though a few were from bladed weapons as the Vultoqi got in amongst them. All troops, including the reserves, were now engaged as neither side would budge an inch in their intent to do their duty.