The giant Orakh shouted something incomprehensible at Dan while clearly pointing at him. He grimaced slightly, wishing he still had one of the translation helmets that they used on Twilight. Even after he returned to Earth, there hadn’t been any need to fish a spare helmet out of storage. After all, his System understood Elvish well enough, and it wasn’t like the average Orakh talked.
Apparently the shamans could, they just rarely bothered. When they did speak, it was usually a couple grunted phrases, urging the common warriors to attack. They never addressed anyone outside their warbands.
Except this one did. And now it was making a clearly obscene gesture at him. This one was almost twice the size of the Orakh surrounding it and bulging with muscles. He was pretty sure a swing from its axe would be enough to bisect an unarmored human in a single stroke. Whatever it actually was, the thing wasn’t a garden-variety Orakh.
Dan opened his mouth to shout instructions to his team when one of the suit’s speakers crackled. “Looks like it’s frog legs for dinner! Light ‘em up, boys!” a woman’s voice echoed across the swamp.
He whipped back toward his squad. They were already opening fire en masse on the clustered Orakh. Abe and William were trying to make themselves heard and assert some order on the squad’s chaos, but nobody was listening.
The Orakh charged through the hail of heavy .50 caliber rounds, throwing themselves into the water and swimming toward the squad. A brief flash of light signalled the first soldier igniting a flamethrower. Seconds later, the water of the swamp was boiling as most of the squad fanned the surrounding area with their flamethrowers.
“Stop fucking firing, you simpletons!” William screamed, his voice amplified by his armor. “Your flamethrowers have limited fuel. We’ll need them to clear out clusters of Orakh once they land! Right now, you’re wasting most of your fuel heating up the water!”
A couple of the troops stopped on their own. Dan could almost see them blinking in a daze underneath their helmets. They were all struggling through the first mana rush of their lives, the sensations gradually growing stronger as the team advanced through the swamp. Evidently, they didn’t have the self-discipline to handle it. He sighed. That’s what he got for recruiting directly from Bourbon Street. Still, he needed bodies for the armor, and he needed them fast. As bad as things were, they’d only be worse without the rest of the team as backup.
Abe grabbed a soldier that was firing their arm-rifle wildly, barely even bothering to aim into the oncoming Orakh. They stumbled, turning toward him and bringing the wrist-mounted gun up toward him. Dan tensed, preparing to intervene, but Abe simply cuffed them upside the head with a loud metallic clang.
“Get your shit under control, Sally!” Abe screamed at the dazed soldier. “Quit barking at me; there are more than enough Orakh for you to kill to get your fucking fix. You need to take a second to aim before you fire. Just like in practice.”
Then Dan did have to move. The sporadic and slightly inaccurate fire hadn’t been enough to slow down the waves of oncoming aliens. He dropped a Fireball into the mud on the shore of their small island, the gout of flame throwing three of the monsters that were pulling themselves out of the water backward into the air. His sword flicked forward, removing a hand before its backstroke took the head, too.
He could vaguely see Jennifer and William on other sections of the island, doing their best to kill the Orakh as they tried to land. If they could get the rest of the team to pull their heads out of their collective asses, they just might have a chance. Every monster took a couple seconds to pull themselves out of the water and onto the island’s shore. In that time, they were almost completely defenseless. Even the incredibly raw new recruits could club an Orakh senseless in that moment.
Abe tried his hardest to knock some sense into the rest of the team. They didn’t need all twenty of the recruits firing at the surrounding islands. There would always be more Orakh, and the primary concern right now was preventing them from gaining a foothold. If this turned into a stand-up fight, they would run out of ammunition long before the enemy ran out of expendable monsters.
Dan kept moving, killing or disabling Orakh after Orakh with his sword, while occasionally tossing a Fireball or a Forcebolt into a cluster of the creatures. One-by-one, dazed soldiers staggered down to the edge of the water, their melee weapons at the ready. Eventually, all of them managed to make it to the shore of the island, where they robotically began killing the oncoming Orakh. Luckily, the armor gave them enough strength that, so long as their fuel supplies held, even an inexpert blow packed enough force to hammer an enemy to the ground.
The fighting continued for another five to six minutes before Dan retreated to the center of the island. There, William and Abe were spotting the swimming Orakh and using the suits’ built-in radios to alert the recruits that enemies were incoming. On the next island over, the gigantic Orakh was ringed by three shamans, but other than that, it hadn’t moved. Its axe remained planted in the ground as it surveyed the ongoing fight as if it was beneath it.
“How are we doing?” Dan asked Abe, taking a swig from his water bottle. More than anything, Dan wanted to wash the grime and sweat out of his hair. But, the way things were going, hydration took precedence. Ever since his stint hiding out in a tree with Jennifer, soaked in his own filth, Dan had been a bit more fastidious about his cleanliness. He wasn’t going to catch dysentery anytime soon, thanks to the System, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to embrace being gross.
“Hard to tell, Dan,” William grunted. “The men are holding for now, but I don’t see any end to the Orakh in sight, and that big one over there looks like bad news. I don’t think that anything without spellshields is going to hold up against that axe. The armor makes all of us sitting ducks. Hate to say it, but I think you’re gonna have to take him.”
“What William said,” Abe replied, his gaze trailing back over to the other island. “I think they’re trying to tire us out, and I hate to say it, but it might work. The recruits shouldn’t get too tired; their armor is doing all of the heavy lifting, after all. That said, constant fighting will wear on the mind. It’s only a matter of time before they aren’t sharp anymore and an accident happens. We’ve bought ourselves some time, but you’re going to need to figure something out, or we’re all going to be in trouble shortly.”
“That’s only if a couple of them don’t go mana-mad first.” William quickly surveyed island. “It’s hard to tell when you can’t see people’s faces and eyes, but they’ve killed a lot of Orakh for newbies. Most of them are probably higher than kites right now.”
Dan opened his mouth to reply, but the earth beneath his feet trembled. An influx of earth mana swirled around the island with the enemy commander. Around him, the three shamans danced wildly, waving wands laden with gems and skulls as they channeled mana. In Dan’s vision, he could practically see a vortex of translucent sand and dirt surrounding the giant Orakh, quickly coalescing on the creature’s axe. For the first time, it lifted the axe in the air.
“Watch yourself!” Dan screamed at the recruits guarding the corner of the island nearest the enemy commander. He’d never know whether they heard and ignored him, or if he simply didn’t scream loud enough.
They didn’t react as the Orakh brought its blade down, causing an avalanche of earth mana to slam into the side of the island. Only two of the soldiers were caught in the attack, but both of them were slammed into the bayou as a large chunk of the island simply disappeared. Immediately, the Orakh around them pulled them to the floor of the swamp, repeatedly stabbing at the joints of the powered suits with knives as they tried to find a point of weakness.
All three shamans didn’t slow their frenetic dance. Already, Dan could feel another swell of earth mana building around the huge Orakh’s axe. Frantically, he cast around for options.
“Get him, Dan!” Abe shouted, clapping William on the back. “William and I will cover you. I don’t know how much good it will do with the shamans over there, but with any luck, they’re too distracted by the spell they’re casting to give you too much trouble.”
Dan nodded quickly to him and gave himself a running start. At the last minute, he activated Gravitational Easing and cranked his strength rune up to its high-performance mode. He jumped into the air as Abe and William opened up behind him. Unsurprisingly, their shots ricocheted off of a massive spellshield surrounding the enemy commander and the shamans. Mentally, Dan made a note to start making some enchanted shells for the suit’s .50 caliber repeaters. They’d be a hassle to manufacture, but a couple of them would probably have been enough to knock a hole in the shield.
He created a force bubble in the air to extend his flight. Just as he prepared to jump off, the lead Orakh locked its beady gaze on Dan and gave him a grotesque smile, all fangs and tusk. Then he swung the axe at Dan, rather than the island.
Swearing to himself, Dan jumped to the side, flinging a Fireball at the enemy commander as the wave of brown and gold energy overwhelmed and destroyed his force bubble. The explosion on the enemy island was soon joined by a handful of shots from armor-mounted rifles. The spellshield was beginning to show signs of wear and tear, but it would still take a bit before it would crack.
He created another force bubble, wincing as the hastily created spell crashed into his chest. Wrapping his arms around it, he pulled himself back up. Luckily, in the aftermath of the Fireball, the Orakh had lost track of him. Even now, its gaze raked the swamp, presumably looking for where he had fallen.
Dan jumped again, landing just outside the edge of the spellshield. He thrust out with his sword, pouring mana into it until its purple light shone brighter than the sun through the heavy cypress forest. The Orakh turned to him, but then the spellshield shattered. He rushed forward, temporal rune active as he absently batted aside hastily cast spells from the shamans. They were all but spent. Each of them was pale and panting from constantly casting the powerful earth spell for their commander to use.
The commander swung his axe horizontally, a rockslide of mana rumbling toward Dan. Almost without thinking, Dan threw himself at the ground, burying his face in the squishy, wet soil. The spell thundered into the top of his spellshield, almost completely draining it in a single, targeted strike. Behind him, the shamans had no such defenses. The earth mana rammed into them with the force of a careening boulder, turning all of them into paste.
Dan pushed off of the dirt, using Gravitational Easing to reach his feet in one smooth motion. The Orakh looked at him dumbly. It glanced at its gigantic axe, still held casually in one hand. It shook the axe, looking for all the world like someone jiggling a cable to jog some electronics into working.
Failing at its task, it snarled at Dan and swung its axe at neck-level. Even with the time dilation rune, the axe was moving very fast. Dan knew better than to meet it head on, instead ducking under it and slapping it upward with his sword while firing a Lightning Stroke into the Orakh’s leg.
The axe whistled through the air above him as the jolt of electricity slammed into the commander’s leg. Almost immediately, Dan noticed that, although it did burn his opponent, the creature was far from disabled by the blast. He stepped forward, only to stop abruptly and lean back as a clawed hand blurred through the air where his torso used to be. As bad as the axe was, he was pretty sure that he’d end up inside that thing’s mouth in a second if he let it grab hold of him.
It jolted back, a fist-sized hole appearing in its shoulder as its suddenly unshielded body caught a fifty caliber round. Growling, it brought its axe up for a double-fisted overhand swing.
Dan jumped backward, slamming a Forcebolt into the same leg as his previous Lightning Stroke, knocking it off-balance. Another bullet slapped into its chest with the grace of a hammer shattering a watermelon.
For the first time in the fight, it stumbled. Dan blew up a Fireball under it, scorching it and knocking it off-balance once more. This time, he closed the gap, and his sword flashed, leaving a deep cut in its chest. The Orakh swung one of its hands, the axe long since forgotten, but Dan easily slipped past the clumsy blow.
Then a bullet struck it in the side of the head. Dan wasn’t sure what the thing’s skull was made from, but the blow only concussed the monster. His sword whipped through the air, decapitating it.
Gritting his teeth as he fought for breath, Dan braced himself for the wave of mana.
