Chapter 25
Sel'uen stayed in her saber cat form and specialized in counterattacks, whenever the opportunity arose. They didn't arise often.
All the tactics and plans they had made for their defense - the good ones and the poor ones - had fallen to the wayside. There was really only one frantic tactic being used by the defenders, and that was to have the tougher fighters up front, using the barricades to keep the fel guards from overwhelming them. While they kept the demons bottled up, the crossbows did the real damage. The demons were soon using their own bodies to scale the barriers.
By the Goddess, there were so many of them. They streamed into the chamber like river rapids. They were appearing with different weaponry, mostly heavy-looking shields that protected their wiry grey bodies. It cut down the efficacy of the crossbows.
Sel'uen was running up and down the line, pouncing and tackling and ripping the vulnerable demons that got through the line. The longer the fighting went on, the more holes appeared. The demons' numbers were endless. The numbers of elves were not.
"Fall back!" Renarion roared. He was fully in his bear form, fighting where the demons were thickest, using his sheer bulk to help keep them back. Sel'uen was amazed at how much of the fighting looked like a shoving contest and how little like the heroics she had imagined.
Yeshaila had fallen pretty early in the fighting. She had still been limping from her leg wound, even in her saber cat form, and had been too slow to avoid a couple chops of a felguard's longsword. Sel'uen had avenged her, but coldly continued her mission of keeping the holes plugged. Yeshaila was not alive, but in her mind, she was not dead either. It was impossible. How could Yeshaila be dead now, after all this time she'd been alive? Sel'uen had seen Kel just a little while ago. She had not seen Xallon at all.
Renarion had taken command of the forward battle simply by force of personality and the size of his form. The Mechanician commanded their ranged, constantly shifting them around the stairs to better exploit the flow of battle. He wasn't half-bad at it. Sel'uen could tell by the number of demon corpses with crossbow quarrels sticking in them.
The call to retreat to the next barrier was a sound one. The holes had become too many for Sel'uen to plug. They would start flooding soon.
She scrambled back, cutting across a few demons and knocking them over to buy a few blood elves moments to pull away. One couldn't get up. She left him, leaping again back towards their next barrier. Renarion retreated slowly, almost backpedaling. The blood elves formed a sort of spear, slowly withdrawing with him as its head. His fur was so covered in demon gore she didn't know how he could even see.
They lost people. They always did when they switched barricades. A few crossbowmen who had taken positions there had to flee back further with the melee taking their spots. When Sel'uen turned, she saw the demons take a few seconds to slaughter the defenders who either hadn't heard the order or had been unable to obey. She saw Kel's head get squished under a fel guard's boot. His brains ejaculated out of his skull. She thought it bizarre that such a thing could happen to someone who should not have been able to die. Quiet Kel was now quiet forever.
The assault resumed in earnest. The demons slammed into the fresh barricades and found stiff resistance again. Sel'uen fought tooth and claw. She could have been gravely wounded and not even known it the way she felt.
Slowly, she became aware that there were less demons at the wall than she was used to. She actually slowed to a stop, to look up and down the barricade to see if anyone needed help. No one really did. She took a moment to assess the situation and discovered that no more fel guards were flooding inside.
"Get ready to push back!" Renarion shouted. Sel'uen understood his meaning. They could retake ground and rebuild barriers before the next wave came.
And when the last of the demons was killed that was exactly what they did. They shoved crates back into position. They dragged bodies - demon or elven, it didn't matter - to fill holes. Sel'uen shifted back into her normal shape to help. She thought she saw Xallon's face once, but then decided she hadn't.
She saw weary and bloodied eyes stealing glances upwards and her own did the same. The mages hadn't moved, still locked in their struggle over the magical barriers. Sel'uen felt so frustrated she could have screamed.
She wanted to run upstairs and demand answers from her Shan'do. She would rip them out of him if she had to. They were dying here. His students were dying. So convinced was she that he deserved a thrashing that she actually started up the stairs, ready to give him what she thought of him, now, before death took her rage from her.
Thundering hit the gate. It was louder than anything the storm had ever sputtered. Sel'uen paused, feet on the stairs, and looked back at the fallen doors.
It was eclipsed by the storm, but a shape was coalescing. Renarion shouted something that she didn't hear. The shape got bigger.
Then it got bigger than that.
It proved too large to fit through the doorway. It smashed through instead.
Sel'uen felt like she saw a god walk out of a fairy tale. Only it was not a good god, but a dark god. Its shape was lined with dark azure and a red that dribbled like tar. It had three heads and each head had a mouth that was filled with teeth that rivaled the length of a Sel'uen standing tall. Something like thick wires or tentacles lashed erect on its heads and body, as if searching for something. Multiple eyes filled each head, swimming with orangish jelly that might have been fire. It was standing on more feet than it ought to have had.
It began stomping its way through the barricades, like a dog over an unsuspecting child's play-set. Its heads dipped, snapping, looking for morsels. It found more than one. One could have been a bear. It was impossible to tell for sure.
Sel'uen stayed on the stairs, staring. Then balls of lightning and fire streaked out and struck the beast.
It roared and backpedaled, like it was surprised at the pain. It spun laboriously and looked up at the mages.
Karielle and the magi hurled more fire and more ice. Golems rose from among the dead and began striking at it from below. A new wave of fel guards flooded into the arena of death.
Sel'uen looked up to see the mages, grim in their work against the creature. There were no expressions on those faces. Just like there was no expression for surrender.
Sel'uen ran up the stairs. She fell more than once. The storm, which had been a dull buzzing all this while, now rose to a fevered pitch all about her. The entire manaforge moaned as the shrieking maelstrom closed in on it. The violet, violent air rushed in through the doorway, slowly filling up the chamber.
And Sel'uen ran up the stairs. She reached the second tier and then the third. She reached the roof and burst out onto it.
She didn't hear it, but there were footsteps pounding behind her.
