AUTHORS NOTES

Sorry, not quite as big as the previous chapter... but I found an IDEAL (for me, maybe not for you) place for it to end.
Don't hate me.

Havok22: Yay! You might want to ensure you have snuck away for this chapter too. It's only half the size, but you won't want to be disturbed for this one. Thanks so much for your review!

Archer1eye: There were around 100 orcs left to the south of town. There are more orcs farther away to the south at the mountains and potentially thousands making their way slowly through the mountains! The Sharein you see after this chapter will be a very different Sharein. I so greatly wanted to include Manipulate Elements but there was not a very good place for it and Sharein wouldn't cast it with the risk of townspeople seeing it. The townsfolk will likely be very curious about the presence of Alladrial, but just assume that wizards would of course have strange 'friends'. (Now I'm thinking about Sappho and her 'very good friend')

Slyksylva: More than chapter 74? Maybe… very maybe ;) .

Chapter 75

15th Day of Late Spring 768 n.c

The sky was starting to lighten as the poisonous cloud dissipated. We could see not a single orc left standing, but... something seemed wrong. I couldn't tell what it was, but there was a feeling.

The guardsmen and the townsfolk all let out a cheer and even Malkarov and Alladrial looked both relieved and happy, but a glance at Father Mattias revealed that I wasn't the only one to feel something odd.

The priest was staring intently at one of the farm houses and Sister Terra was staring as well, but not at the house. I followed her gaze and saw that she was staring intently at the bodies in the street.

One of the bodies shuddered and I watched as its leg twitched. There was other movement too, other bodies were shuddering and twitching and I realised exactly what was happening! Everybody else did too, the guards were pointing with dismay and the townsfolk looked suddenly very scared. Nobody reacted quicker than Father Mattias however, quick as a flash he pushed through the line of guards and stood next to the first of the bodies. He was holding his holy symbol of Mithras out in front of him on outstretched arm.

"By the power of Mithras; she who is life, she who is goodness, I command you: begone!" He shouted and five of the bodies disintegrated into ash.

But ten more were already pushing themselves up to standing. Father Mattias held his holy symbol out once again and began to command but stopped, suddenly.

All of us looked at him in shock as he collapsed onto the ground. An arrow was sticking out of his head! An orc had shot him straight through his eye and he was lying there far too still.

"Father!" Sister Terra cried and began to rush forward, but Malkarov grabbed hold of her and pushed her to the ground.

"Down!" He shouted.

Alladrial dropped to the ground and so did I almost immediately. I watched the soldiers all drop, but realised with dismay that some were lying in a natural way and others had collapsed awkwardly. Six of them had arrows sticking out of them.

I cast Shield, Mage Armour and Protection From Arrows onto myself in quick succession and I could feel Malkarov and Alladrial doing similarly. I lifted myself up tentatively to look where everything was coming from and saw that thirty of the orc bodies had stood up and were shambling towards us. On either side of the farmhouse that Father Mattias was looking at earlier there stood another ten orcs holding crossbows. I still could not see the orc responsible for the zombies. I had seen a crossbow once, in possession of a merchant's guard who was happily showing it off to everybody. It shot a smaller, but thicker projectile than a bow, but I couldn't remember what he had called them.

The orcs with the crossbows saw me easily enough and ten arrow things shot towards me. Half of them appeared to be on track to hit me but they seemed to… bend around me or hit an invisible shield and bounce off.

I hoped my spells would continue to protect me as I cast Elemental Explosion at the mass of zombie orcs making their way ever closer.

The result was… not what I expected.

The small ball of power shot out from me and struck the nearest zombie with an expected sphere of black light and purple lightning expanding out from it. The zombies and non-zombie bodies inside it were withering like normal but as each zombie began to drop the sphere of light expanded! Larger and larger it got until I was afraid that it would expand to include us as well! It had almost reached the body of Father Mattias when the last zombie fell and from that point it rapidly shrunk back down to nothing. I let out a breath that I wasn't aware I was holding. Malkarov and Alladrial both cast Elemental Explosions of their own towards the farm house. Alladrial's exploded with a rock shrapnel on one side of the farmhouse killing the fire orcs there instantly and peppering the house full of holes. Malkarov's hit at the back wall of the house; the orcs there were the first ones to be sucked in, but the wall of the house shuddered and began to break apart with Malkarov's magical wind seeming pulling all the wooden debris into a tight ball. When the rubbish and bodies dropped to the ground, the entire back wall had been ripped off and most of the contents closest to it.

From out of the farmhouses front door stepped an orc wearing a red robe with the stylised symbol of Gruumsh painted on the front of it (the downward pointed triangle with chevron and three bones.) It was carrying a long and evil looking spear, which it pointed towards us.

Magic Missile spells from all three of us zoomed off towards the orc priest, but not before it managed to call upon the power of Gruumsh. The sky lit up with a giant circle of flame that appeared to be getting bigger and bigger as it came down towards us!

It wasn't a circle, it was a column at least forty feet high rushing towards us! I held confidence with the protections my staff offered me but Sister Terra took matters in her own hands. She prayed audibly to Mithras and a shimmering silvery dome sprung up above us! Unfortunately the magical shield did not cover everyone and Masters Yulin and Scorlett were caught by the column of fire as it touched down. The rest of us remained safe behind the silvery dome listening to the screams of pain coming from the two men.

When the fire disappeared our circle of road was surrounded by a ten foot ring of blackened earth and the blackened, charred bodies of the two townsfolk and Father Mattias.

Only four of the nine caravan guards remained alive and only three of the seven townsfolk who had taken up arms survived. The biggest loss for Easthaven was obviously Father Mattias, a loss that the town would feel keenly. Who would assist those who had lost people close to them through their sorrow with the Father also taken from us? All of the farmers to the south of the town were likely dead and a number of other townsfolk as well. Tomas… Tomas was dead. I pushed away the thoughts, because our task was still not finished.

"Return to the northern valley entrance and wait there," Malkarov told the remaining people, "if we do not return then take everyone and make for Sunhaven. If the mayor hasn't already, send a rider to Eastholm castle and warn the Baroness Eastholm."

Sister Terra nodded and I called for Shard.

She appeared right next to me with a serious looking smile, "ready?"

I looked to Malkarov and Alladrial, who both nodded, "yes."

Shard took my and Malkarov's hands and had us hold hands with Alladrial as she used her power to move us from Easthaven to the barrier mountains, a good half days journey to the south.

We appeared slightly up the mountain side in a lightly forested area.

Shard pointed through the trees and whispered, "in about three hundred yards that way is the pass. It's about twenty feet wide, will that be a problem?"

Alladrial smiled, "I can do that, it will be about… fifteen feet high."

She nodded, "that would slow them down dramatically. There may be an orc or two coming through the pass, but the rest are waiting about fifty feet away from the wall. There's about one hundred and twenty of them at the moment. As soon as you appear, Gruumsh is going to know it. I can either stay here to help with the orcs or I can work to counteract whatever Gruumsh is planning?"

"I've got this," I said confidently, "but whatever Gruumsh could do would be an unknown."

Malkarov agreed, "best that you do what you've been doing. We need to seal the pass firstly, otherwise all will be lost. Once that's done, we can help with the orcs already on this side."

Shard smiled and nodded and gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, "I'd say good luck, but Mother is watching over you."

I gave her a kiss on the cheek before she disappeared.

"Sneaky?" I asked and Malkarov nodded, "sneaky."

We all three cast Invisibility and See Invisibility on ourselves and headed in the direction Shard had pointed. The pass was exactly as Shard described it, a twenty foot wide chasm where it appeared the mountain had split in half. Sitting down a hundred feet away waited a hundred orc soldiers, two other orcs were walking out of the pass. I was disappointed to note that the ground sloped back from the waiting orcs towards the chasm, which limited the usefulness of Malkarov's wand. Elemental Explosion spells it was then. The sky had lightened enough that Malkarov was able to make out the orcs fairly clearly. Unfortunately, that also meant that the orcs would be able to make them out even more clearly.

"You wait for my first Elemental Explosion before you start casting Wall of Stone?" I suggested, "and I'll attack the orcs from the side to draw them away from you?"

"No," Malkarov whispered back, "if you draw them towards yourself then you will be the only one there, better for you to be with us."

"I'll be able to kill only half by the time they surround us if I cast from the pass," I argued, "we'll be slaughtered."

"She's got a point," Alladrial said and pointed to a rocky outcrop two hundred feet away, "that outcrop there is about three hundred feet from the orcs, she'd be able to get off many more spells before they even got near her."

Malkarov frowned, but relented, "okay. You go to those stones and we'll wait for the first one to hit before we begin."

I walked to the stones, confident in my Invisibility, and stood partially behind them when I got there. I could see that Malkarov and Alladrial had arrived near the pass and the two orcs that were coming out of it had already reached the main group.

Elemental Explosion was already sailing off towards them when I began casting it again. A headache started to form at the back of my skull and I took note of it with some alarm. Would I have enough power to finish this job?

The first Elemental Explosion spell only exploded as I had already finished casting the third one and I kept them going, targeting different parts of the main mass of orcs. A fourth spell went off as the orcs began to realise where they were coming from and started to charge towards me. As more orcs charged, the rest followed. My fifth Elemental Explosion was aimed at the leader of the pack and that was when black spots started to fill my vision.

"Poo!" I exclaimed as the headache flared even more.

As I looked ahead, I realised that I had taken out over three quarters of the enemy but that left about forty orcs charging at me while I was unable to cast any more damaging spells!

I pointed the wand ahead of me as they had neared about one hundred feet and commanded, "iktha!"

The wand crumbled to ash in my hand.

The sickly yellow cloud billowed out in front of the charging orks who were hesitant to enter it. The sunlight allowed them to see clearer, despite their obvious weakness to it, and they could see something obviously wrong with it.

I glanced towards the pass and noticed that it was now blocked by a high wall, Malkarov and Alladrial were still working on making it permanent and they didn't appear to have been spotted. I noticed that the orcs had split around the cloud into two groups and both were charging straight towards me! Suddenly, a blinding pain erupted in my shoulder and everything went black for a moment. When colour returned I found myself looking up at the brightening sky. I looked across at where agony was spreading through my body to see a thick piece of wood sticking out of my shoulder! An arrow? No, thicker than that. It had fletchings like an arrow, but only two of them, one of those not-arrows. The orcs had crossbows! A numb feeling was spreading all through my right arm.

'Silly Sharein,' I thought, 'you can't just lay down now.'

And so I rolled over onto the only arm that I seemed to be able to move and pushed myself to my feet. I felt a bit light headed though and wasn't surprised when I found myself lying back down on the ground again.

I blinked in confusion and furrowed my brows… Why had the pain from my shoulder moved to my stomach and leg? I looked down my body to see two more of those not-arrows sticking out of my stomach, another in my left thigh and another stuck in my right leg somewhere below my knee.

I turned my head towards a sound coming from my right and it took a moment to recognise what it was, because to begin with it looked like a whole heap of orcs were charging at me running on a wall.

'Not wall... ground,' I corrected myself, 'your heads on it's side.'

They were getting much too close and I realised with a start that they would likely kill me any moment now as soon as they got close enough to do so. I didn't know what to do, I just knew that I needed to get out of there, I needed to get to Shard. But Shard was at her altar, not here… I needed to get there. I needed to get to the altar. I needed…

Something rose up inside me; a memory, a feeling of something experienced. But the feeling was distant, like it was at the bottom of a well and far far out of reach.

But it was exactly what I needed! Exactly it! All I had to do was…. R..e..a..c..h.

But I overreached! I lost my balance; I was no longer sitting on the edge of the well, instead I was falling into it! Down, down, down I fell.

Time slowed, the orcs slowed. Everything slowed except the sense of falling, but I didn't care. These were all good things because the longer it took the orcs to get to me the more time I had to reach the bottom and I was going to reach the bottom! Already it was rushing up to meet me, that memory, that feeling. As I was falling towards it, it was racing up to meet me and when we connected… Everything happened at once!

The orcs reached me and raised their swords.

A blinding flash went off.

I saw Shard's face looking down at me in fear, and everything went… black.