Chapter Eighteen: Battle
Two weeks had passed since Harry came to the Vardens and Harry now was waiting for ten elf magicians that were supposed to come there from the elf's outpost in Ceris. In those two weeks a lot had happened, he had solved the food issues of the Vardens singlehandedly earning him a good reputation. The Du Gata Vrangr had to make him join them, their new leader a sorceress by the name of Triana had tried to seduce him in order to join the Du Gata Vrangr and to say the truth Harry almost fell for her charms, seems he had a soft spot for black curly hairs with green eyes,-but he took it like a man and refused her offer. By the weeks end Harry had transported the people willing to join in the war, the entire twelve hundred people of which thirty were magicians, of the fifty magicians that there had been in total.
His idea to send a bird with a message had worked and the queen had lifted the protections around the forest, the ones that prevented communications,- and had already started to mobilize her army but in the meantime she was sending ten of her best magicians as she needed the rest to help with the preparations for war. That's how he found himself waiting for the arrival of the elven magicians. After a few minutes he felt ten incredibly powerful signatures accompanied by at least twenty other less powerful signatures, that Harry figured were guards sent to protect them in case of an ambush or any other source of harm. In moments the large party emerged from the forest and if he wasn't expecting them he wouldn't have noticed them, that's how gracefully and silently they moved throught the forests.
He immediately recognized the magicians as they were the only ones who stayed the other elves immediately returning back to their trees within moments after getting out clearly having seen that everything was how it was supposed to be. He saw that the group was composed of three females and seven males, though the males could be mistaken for females except because of their incredibly soft features that lacked any of the roughness of the human males. What attracted his attention however was one of the female elves, a woman with red hair that looked like they were on fire under the rays of the sun, she had grey eyes, she stood at shoulder height of Harry, she had perfect body curves not to large but not small either. Like all the other elves she excluded an aura that normally attracted humans but since that didn't work on him he was pretty sure he was actually attracted to her especially after seeing her aura,- rather than falling for their overwhelming seductive presence.
"Hello you must be Harry Potterson, the human we have heard of so much" said one of the female elves with silver hair, she was also the most powerful elf in the company "we're mortified the most powerful and skilled of our kind couldn't come to your aid but I hope our help will be enough in this instance"
"Don't sweat it, your presence will only add to the already massive magical might in our disposal, your presence will be most likely an overkill but you know what the say here is no kill like overkill" said Harry with his most charming smile, which seemingly had an effect on all three female elves present "However I'm at a disadvantage here, you now my names but I don't know yours, if you would be so kind as to introduce yourselves"
"Fair enough, I'm named Saria' said the silver haired she-elf" she is named Eletha" she said pointing at the black haired she-elf"she is named Saelihn" pointing at the red haired beauty and then she turned around to the male and said "this isTaegen "pointing at a brown haired elf "this is Arbane" pointing at an elf which had flaming red hair and eyes that were totally black even where there should be white"this isRydel" she pointed at an silver haired elf "he is Tehlmar" pointing at an elf that was the tallest of them and had midnight black hair "he is named Airdan" she said pointing at an elf that had a panther like appearance "he is Flinar" she said pointing at a honey colored hair elf which had two short swords strapped at his back instead of bows like everyone else "and last but not least this is Nindrol" she pointed at an elf with long flowing white hair which was also the most powerful male in the group when it came to raw power.
"Good to know you all, now if you would please take hold of this piece of rope so that we can leave" said Harry offering them a piece of rope that had been laying on the ground until then.
"May I ask how it works?" asked the red haired she-elf, Saelihn.
"It works using a piece of magic from where I came from and it temporarily transports us into a different sub-dimension and then transports us back into our universe but at a predetermined location, also this is a single use only" explained Harry.
"How does it work" asked Saria.
"Okay say toothbrush and it will activate" said Harry after they all had touched it.
"Aren't you coming?" asked the white haired elf, Nindrol.
"Nope, I dislike the feeling of pulling on my navel, that this method does have as a side effect, plus that they want to showcase your arrival not mine, so I will go ahead at my laboratory" explained harry as he "Slipped" away.
Toothbrush" said Saria and they too disappeared in a crack only to reappear inside of Tronxheim surrounded by dozens of guards and hundreds of bystanders who immediately started cheering at the newly arrived help.
Three days later
Harry was working in his new laboratory, one of he rooms previously used to watch for any approaching Dragon but now it was expanded from the inside to be as big as the open field in the mountains, where most tunnels led. Currently it was filed with different equipments, some of which totally defied a couple of rules of Physics, - and canisters filled with different liquids that spawned the entire colors of the rainbow. He was interrupted by a knock in the door, he had placed there with magic as there wasn't one there previously,- and he opened it with a wave of his hands and then reassumed his work on analyzing the properties of the corals he had taken in the cave in Teirm, not having had the opportunity to do that as he had always had one thing or another to deal with,- reckoning it would only be Eragon or Murtagh since Brom and Aria didn't visit much being occupied with creating a battle strategy.
"So this is the laboratory of the great wizard?" asked a melodious voice as its owner was lokking in one of the canisters.
"Yep, careful with that or you may be reduced to a pile of ashes, well that or just smell horrible I'm not sure" said Harry not even turning around to se the newcomer having already reckonised her as Saelihn.
"Well that is reassuring" comented he elf as she gracefully moved through the lines of working tables and came near Harry.
"Well its your type of magic after all and I am not as familiar with it as I am with mine and even with mine I suck at potions" explained Harry "so why did you come here, I doubt that you came here just because I'm to charming to stay away from me"
"You're too arrogant for your own good" said he elf laughing.
"It's not arrogance when you can back it up" replied Harry with a smile of his own "so why did you come here?"
"I was curious to know about your type of magic" answered the elf as she sat in a nearby chair.
"Ahh you mean your qeen is interested in my type of magic so she sent you as I have been flirting with you this last three days, am I right?" asked Harry wit a risen eyebrow.
"I umm..." stuttered the elf at the accuracy of Harry's statement.
"Its okay I'll tell you since there is no way you can replicate it" said Harry and seeing the questioning look from the elf he continued "you need a core, a metaphysical aspect that you must be born with and then trained with It, without you can't channelize the magic necessary to perform spells"
"So wizards are born with their ability rather than earn it like magicians?" asked Saelihn.
"Yes, so to the more exciting parts, we use our core to channelize the magical energy of the world around us to power our spells thus we don't physically tire from using magic" explained Harry "that doesn't mean we have no limit, we need wands to focus power and only the most powerful and skilled of us can perform wandless magic, in addition if we channelize more magical power than our cores can handle than we risk losing our magic permanently or in the worst cases our lives, this risk is especially present in childrens whose cores have yet to stabilize and are in a state of constant expanding which stops at the age of seventeen after whih the cores expand at a slower rate"
"So you don't tire but if you overdo it you have even less risks than us?" asked the elf.
"Not so much because if you overdo you die or you faint, plain and simple but if one wizard was to destroy his core, the pain would be his companion for all his life, his body would become immensely fragile due to the lacking magical energy coursing through it and we shouldn't forget the effects on the psyche of the wizard, which are devastating and you can't understand unless you have feelt them yourself" replied Harry.
"So they'd wish they had died?" asked Saelihn.
"Correct, so to avoid using to much energy at once we created rituals, allowing us to channelize a massive amount of energy by channelzing a smaller amount of energy thorugh a longer period of time thus avoiding our weaknees, your magic doesn't have this weakness as you can put a lot more power into spells than us, granted that you have such an energy in the first place" continued to explain Harry.
"Now we come to how are spells and rituals created, because we all know the dangers of channelizing raw energy without a given shape and then hope that it does what you want" explained Harry "to shape it we use number as structures in the same way you use the Ancient Language, using these number we create structures that are then filled with power from our cores and thus we create spells and rituals that do what we want"
"But we can use magic without the need of words" said Saelihn.
"That is because there is an instinctual understanding of the old method of magic contol, that makes creating magicl structures with just thoughts possible,-in every living being and when you do that you are just calling upon that knowledge to shape the magic although that way is to volatile and has great dangershence the reason why the Grey peple gave te Ancient Language its power, to stop a stray though from causing a chain reaction that would eventually end the existence of life on this planet "explained Harry.
"So you can't use wordless magic of our type since you don't have our innate understanding?" asked Saelihn.
"True, now onto runes, they are symbols that once filled with power they create certain effect, in clusters we call runic arrays they can create even more complex effects sometimes beyond the capacity of a single Wizard" said Harry "these symbols once activated become self-reliant but can be overpowerd through brute power or through some skilled wizard deactivating the runes, once that happens they beome inert until they are reactivated"
"Now onto potions, they are made through combining different ingredients, most of them have inherent magic powers but without the miniscule amount of magic we unconsciously pour unto the potion during its preparation, the potions would be useless and that's why I suck at it, I have a perfect control of my magic so doing this thing its not my forte as it requires for it to be instinctual not controlled, thought it can also be controlled but it is very hard to learn the right amount" explained Harry.
"That is a very bad to suck at an area of magic because you have to good of a control over your magic, so what's the difference in our magic types except that yours requires a core?" asked Saelihn.
"Well you channelize the magic through your body hence why you get tired so easily while using magic but as your body gets more used to the magic coursing through it your magical power increases but not because you now have larger reserves but because you are more used to it hence the reason why elves are so adapted and powerful in the use of magic, except the fact that you share a similar power source to Dragons" explained Harry surprising her at his knowledge of Elves and magic "furthermore your magic focuses more in pure power rather than deceiving and subtle manipulations like my magic, not that your magic can't do that but those kind of manipulations are more difficult"
"One last question, the method of transportation you used to get us and the deserters of the Empire, what is it called and what are their limits?" asked Saelihn.
"The method used with you is called portkey and it doesn't have any limit for as long as it is big enough for all the needed people to take hold of it while I used a different method for the deserters as they were to mch in number, they were transported using the same method I transpoerted myself here, but that method has a two hundred people at once limit as for distance it has none" explained Harry.
"This can change the war and how it is fought" said the elf.
"Yes but I can't teleport behind wards so chill and you owe me something for this information" said Harry with a smirk.
"And what would that be?" asked Saelihn.
"You go out on a date with me, after the battle" said Harry.
"A date?" asked Saelihn.
'You don't have those here?" asked Harry.
"No we do but I thought you'd ask something more important" replied Saelihn.
"This is important to me right now and then there is nothing I want that I couldn't get myself so I asked this of you, after all this information is useless without me to use that power as it can't be replicated" explained Harry with a shrug.
"Well, I'll have to leave now" said the elf.
"Yeah, just remember to get more beautiful for our date, if that is possible" said Harry making Saelihn blush slightly.
With that Harry returned to his work humming all the while. He had a lot to do after all, in two days the Urgal would attack and he had to be finished by then. With that though he continued to stir the cauldron that held one of the most destructive potions in existence, the Voidflame.
Two days later
Harry stood in front of the newly excavated pit, it had been only added yesterday wen Harry presented the Voidflame to Ajihad. To the incoming enemies it looked like flat ground but underneath it there was a pit, seven meters deep, a hundred meters wide and thirty meters long, - and on its floor stood a layer of transparen, violet liquid that as soon it was ignited would burn with enough heat to actually melt rock and imemdiatly kill any Urgal unfortunate enough to be in there. The only ways for the Voidflame to be extinguished was for its magic to be spent by burning for two weeks on a row or for it to be extinguished by powerful magic, enough to kill two or three magicians through exhaustion.
He brushed some imaginary dust from his new armor. The armor was made by dwarfs as a gift for his help, it was made of dwarf steel, steel produced through methods known only to the dwarfs, - and it covered every inch of his body while at the same time allowing for great mobility, it didn't hurt that Harry had enchanted it to be highly flexible, - underneath it he wore mesh shirt and normal pants. Hanging in the left side of his hip were Willbreaker and in his right side stood Lazarus, the Incarnation of Titans, a silvery war hammer, covered in hundred of small runes that if you looked attently you could see them glowing with a faint silver light, - this hammer had earned its name by being capable of leveling mountains in a single swing. Harry had taken It from one of the worlds he had visited because he thought it would be cool to come in Alagaesia and level entire armies with a single swing of his war hammer, he had just started to travel and had yet to earn much actual experience with true warfare, - he figured he could use to literally swing the battle on their favor.
Harry was broken from his musings by the shaking of the ground as thousand of Urgasl were coming through the tunnels. He smiled feeling the traps he had placed on all three tunnels activate. No engraged scream came from the tunnels proving Harry right, they were being controlled, most probably from the Shade,- and a few minutes later the first Urgal head appeared in the exits of the tunnels. Three flaming arrows were launched by the elves present, as they had the better eyesight and aim, - and the entrances of the tunnels were lit in flames. Many Urgals were lit in flames but their comrades cut them down and then covered the flames with rocks and and the bodies of their dead.
After that they swarmed out and run toward the Varden and Dwarf army waiting for them, many of them falling into the pit filled with the Voidflame potion. Harry ignited the fire with a silent spell, immedialty the screams of the Urgals, that had fallen in the pit,- filled the air, stopping the advancing Urgal wave for a second, a second their archers used to kill even more of them as they were now easier targets,- before they continued forward. The Urgals in the center tried to stop once the illusion over the pit disspeared, - but the rush that they had ended pushing a few dozen more Urgals in the flaming pit that was currently burning with the violet colored Voidflame. Immedialty the Urgals in the center split to the only ways the had to pass around the flaming pit thus making them easier picks for the archers stationed in the high grounds.
Soon enough the valley was filed by the sound of metal against metal as the Urgals clashed against the flanks of the Varden and Dwarf army. The left flank was commanded by Brom and in that flank stood Saphira and Eragon, both clad in their Dwarfen armor and next to them stood Aria in her leather armor- the right flank was commanded by Ajihad and next to him, sorrounded by dozens of guards, - stood Murtagh, clad in an armor that Harry himself had given to him, - while the center was commaned by Hrothgar and there stood Harry, side by side with the Dwarf King, - waiting for whatever enemy would escape the flanks. This formation had made their superior numbers useless and had given them a great chance of victory. Soon enough arrows began to come from the Urgal side, killing and injuring many on their side.
After a few minutes Harry got bored to wait for any enemy to get through and opened his mind to find enemy magicians. As soon as he opened his mind he was assaulted by the foul feeling of the Dark Magic that controlled the Urgals, he sometimes hated being so magic sensitive, - pushing beyond that he zoned in, one particularly powerful Urgal magician and assaulted him. It took one full minute before the magician fell and Harry felt for the places in the Urgal army where there were no wards, while many had to search for their opponents mind to find what part of the army he protected Harry didn't need to do that due to being so magic sensitive, - and using one of the twelve words of death in a three worded spell, he killed over two hundred Urgals who simply collapsed on the ground.
Cheers rose from the Varden army seeing so many enemies simply fall dead, it gave them hope. After a few minutes, the first breach happened, the left flank was assaulted by a division made up from Kulls and under such a force a part of them gave out and ten Kulls began running toward the center formation. Taking out Lazarus, Harry run toward them and met them halfway and ducking under the swing of one of the Kulls he swinged with his own hammer and with a loud crack the Urgal was sent flying toward the flaming pit, already dead, - his companions joined him quickly but they attacks were useless against the impenetrable defense that Harry had developed after years of fighting in different wars.
With a mighty swing Harry hit one of the Urgals closerto him and the air was displaced with a sound similar to thunder, - before four Kulls went flying toward the left flank. The rest of the Kulls were dealt with once the rest of the center of the army joined him. Hrothgar and the people around him looked at Harry with an awed expression on their faces, it wasn't everyday the saw a lanky looking man throw Kulls around like they were broken dolls, - but didn't have much time as more Kulls broke through the lines and soon enough the battle reasumed.
Eragon was swinging atop of Saphira, - at any Kull that was nearby, Za'rock cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. Eragon really liked how Za'rock fit into his hands as he stroke enemies down, Brom having decided to give the sword to Eragon as he needed to have a Riders sword. He felt pain where one lucky Kull had managed to land a glancing blow and then proceeded to cut through the seemingly endless wave of Kulls. Saphira breathed fire as soon as he found an area devoid of Dwarfs or humans, roasting every Kull or Urglas in the entire area.
Brom waved through the wild swings of the Kulls as he cut through them with his new sword, enchanted by himself and Harry, making it almost as sharp and resistant as Za'rock itself,-, with a swipe of his sword he cut the last Kulls head and then proceeded to open his mind to look for enemy magicians, he was about to pinpoint the location of one but was interrupted by the noise of wooden ladders falling upon solid rock. Opening his eyes he saw that Urgals had finally brought the wooden ladders out of the tunnels and were using them now to cross throught he area previously unaccesible to them due to the flaming pit. With incredible speed and agility hundreds of Urgals and some Kulls run across the ladders and headed for the center.
Harry readied himself to expect the onslaught of the Urgals by drawing his blade, Willbreaker, seeing as he couldn't freely use his war hammers full power with all those allies nearby Urgals fell simultaneously by a single swing of Harry's sword but three more took their place. This way the battle became a blur for Harry as he danced, for the lack of a better word, - through the attacks of the Urglas and Kulls and he killed them for making the single mistake of facing him in battle. It was only half an hour latter that Harry snaped out of his "auto-pilot", when he felt the presence of Durza above them and he looked a lot stronger.
Durza smiled as he locate his target and he raised himself and spoke a short strings of words and from his outstretched hand a beam of crimson energy headed for Harry's location. Upon his prey a dome of azure energy appeared that absorbed the entire beam with no visible damage or any wavering. With a cry of frustration Durza lowered himself in the ground and began slaughtering dwarfs and humans left and right as he neared his prey only to find himself pushed toward the flaming pit by an invisible force, smiling he whispered a spell that stopped him mid-way through the pit and took him out. Preparing himself to return the favor to his prey he readied his energy to lash out at him but a mental message stopped him and he was forced to return to the tunnels.
Harry was baffled by Durza's sudden retreat, he didn't think that the Shade was a creature to just give up but he felt his magical signature leaving the battlefield and returned his focus to the Kull trying to cut his head off and with a swipe of his sword he cut the Kull in two. He retuned to the fighting for a full twenty minutes before he felt Durza's signature return only this time he was in the back of the army and with him were a great deal of soldiers. Turning way from the fight he activated the enchanted ring and connected to Hrothgar, he had given one of those rings to every leader of the Varden although his enchantment would wear off within a day or two.
"Hrothgar, you have a thousand soldiers of the Empire coming from your back" warned Harry "warn the rest as I notify Eragon, as the Shade is there and he is the only one who could defeat him"
"Okay but hurry" said Hrothgar as he cut his link with him.
"Eragon you must go into the rear of our formation, Durza is coming from there with a thousand sldiers of the Empire and you're the only one who could stop him right now" warned Harry
"What about you, I'm not powerful enough yet" said Eragon believing himself uncapable of defeating a Shade.
"You are more than capable and in adittion that power isn't everything" encouraged Harry.
"But it damn helps" replied Eragon as he and Saphira flew toward the rear where the first soldiers of the Empire were already coming out.
Harry turned around having decided that he was going to help Eragon a bit but he was interrupted by a massive power signature, far more powerful than anything he had felt since coming to Alagaesia, except for Galbatorix. Locking on the power signature he reconised it as belonging to a Shade but this Shade was leagues beyond the power that even Durza possessed right now and he was heading straight for him. Steeling himself for the oncoming battle, he wished good luck as he had to face the Shade least he destroys the entire army. With a groan an entire cliff deatached itself from the mountain and fell upon the pit that they had dug covering it and allowing for more Urgals to rush in.