Before the Lythal could spot them, or more likely, smell them, Dan downed it with a Forcebolt. He still didn’t have enough control over the magic to shape the ball of force magic he fired at the wolfman into a point, but it wasn’t the most essential when the mana itself hit like a supercharged baseball bat to the back of the alien’s head. Soundlessly, the Lythal staggered forward a step before collapsing to its hands and knees.
Jennifer darted forward, plunging an invisible blade through the creature’s throat, severing its windpipe and spine in one swift blow before it could speak or make any real noise. She stepped away from the body and glanced back toward Dan with a frown. A second later, a modest amount of mana washed over both of them. Not quite enough for him to rank up, but enough that Dan felt it.
He stepped over to the corpse. The Lythal was wearing what passed for an Imperial uniform, shorts with a series of combat medals pinned to its fur. This close, Dan could confirm through the distressingly tight shorts that the Lythal was male.
“Do you think they’re going to miss him?” Jennifer asked, staring at the body.
“Probably,” Dan replied, his brow furrowed. “If he had a tendency to wander off, we might have a little bit of time, but at some point, there is going to be a roll call, and his superiors are going to figure out that he’s missing. The real question is whether we’ll be able to blame his death on local wildlife, or if his officers will be able to figure out that there are scouts in the area.”
Jennifer turned back to him. “What do you think? You’re our resident Tellask expert. Do we have any idea what they will do?”
“I’m pretty useless on this point,” Dan grumbled. “I’ve run into precisely one more Tellask military unit than you, and that was at first contact. Unfortunately, elven combat leadership seems to boil down to ‘do what the most powerful spellcaster within range says.’ Apparently, no elf wants to listen to the orders of someone outside of their house, and that’s stopped them from having any sort of written or standardized procedures. That’s a good thing for humanity in general. They don’t have any sort of standard operating procedures, and it can lead to confusion and ill-thought-out orders in the heat of the moment.”
Dan shrugged helplessly. “Of course, confusion cuts both ways. If the Tellask don’t know what they’re going to do from one minute to the next, there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to predict their responses.”
“I vote that we not risk it, then.” Jennifer pursed her lips. “The soonest they’ll probably notice him missing is by the end of the day. Let’s make ourselves scarce before then. I’d prefer to avoid capture and torture if it’s a possibility.”
“That makes sense to me,” Dan agreed. “I say we hide his body and try to sabotage the two towers on either side of this one. Given the patrols, I don’t think we’re going to get close enough to the landing site to make a proper report, but if we can clear a route in it will save a lot of lives.”
Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t know, Dan. We only have a couple of hours until nightfall, and two towers might be pushing it a little. I think we can do one, but I really think that we should just play it safe here.”
“I’m not sure how much good just one tower does us though,” Dan replied, glancing up at the crystal topping the nearby tower. “If these things can take down planes, they have plenty of range. The only way we’re going to be able to clear an avenue of attack is if the actual curvature of the enemy base itself interferes with them. Right now, even when this tower goes down, the two next to it will be able to attack anything we send in this direction. I’m sure the army will appreciate not having to directly charge a defensive emplacement, but if I were them, I’d be less than thrilled about weathering crossfire. If we don’t take down both towers, we’re going to lose a lot of men when the attack comes.”
Jennifer was silent for a handful of seconds as she alternated her gaze between the dead Lythal and the nearby towers. Eventually, she sighed. “You’re the boss, Dan. I still think that going for two towers is incredibly risky, but you might be right. It might just be a risk we have to take to get these pointy eared bastards off of our planet.”
Time passed at a crawl as they waited for the next patrol to pass them by before running the dead Lythal’s body back to the treeline. Then, they waited again for another opening before dashing to the second tower. Again, nothing spotted them. Dan didn’t know if it was luck on their part or arrogance and overreliance on the patrols on the part of the Tellask, but he didn’t question it as he repeated his alterations on the mana transference runes of this tower.
The sun was beginning to set as they ran toward the last tower. Maybe it was the golden red light coming from the West, but Dan rushed the final raid. He barely waited for the patrol to leave before Jennifer and him left the treeline, and he immediately began work on the runescript before Jennifer fully scouted the perimeter.
In the end, they didn’t even have to wait for someone to notice that the Lythal was missing. Instead, as Dan was altering the runes, a human Imperial walked around the side of the tower and undid the clasp on his pants before fishing out his member and peeing against the side of the building. Dan stared at him blankly for a moment, his sword still crackling purple and an inch deep in the wall. Jennifer was on the other side of the tower, securing the area. He would need to handle this alone.
“This planet sure is a miserable one,” the man said with a grunt, not even looking over at Dan. “Hotter than hell, and the water gives you worse shits than week-old meat.”
“Yeah,” Dan replied blankly, unsure how to respond.
“Locals are too well-armed for my taste.” The man leaned forward, resting his left arm against the side of the tower while his right remained in his pants. “The elves said that they don’t have magic, but those war machines and battle wands are something else. Luckily, they stopped throwing us into the thick of it after the first couple of attacks.”
The man sighed with appreciation as a stream of liquid began splattering against the side of the tower.
“Maybe the elves have spellshields that can hold up against the battle wands,” he complained, eyes on his target. “But it’s not like they would share that sort of thing with us. A bunch of the guys are talking about swapping out their armor for pavises. The enchantments in the armor don’t do shit against the battle wands. The shields are heavy and awkward as hell, but at least they’ll hold up against that shit the enemy infantry is using.
“Shame that they have us using the Kerrn,” the man finished and began lacing up his trousers. “Infesting a planet with the bastards always decreases its value, and our portion of the purse for seizing this place is going to take a big hit. I get it, though. I’d rather have the little scale rats charge those battle wands than someone I care about.”
“What unit are you with, anyway?” The man finally turned and looked at Dan. At no point had Dan moved, sword still in the tower as he stared at the oblivious enemy soldier in shock.
The expression of surprise on the Tellask guard’s face changed all of that.
Dan hit him with a Lightning Stroke, paralyzing the man just long enough for him to close the distance between the two of them and decapitate the man. Frantically, he tried to finish the inscription. This time, the soldier was on duty. There was no doubt in Dan’s mind that he would be missed when he didn’t report back from his bathroom break in the next couple of minutes.
Sure enough, just after he finished altering the tower’s external runes and sheathed his blade, Dan heard a pair of voices approaching. Silently, he cursed Jennifer. She was watching the other side of the tower for patrols, but he could really use her help at the moment.
“I know Theord said he had to piss, but this is ridiculous.”
Dan drew his sword, a slight frown wrinkling his face. The man was speaking accented Tellask, just like the previous guard.
“He’s probably just trying to avoid extra duty,” another male voice replied. “He got assigned to clean up the staircase and spellshield emitters. That’s sweaty and messy work, especially in this heat. I get trying to avoid it, but the sergeant is just going to take it out on him if he’s caught dawdling.”
Then the men rounded the wall of the tower. One was a red-headed giant, almost six five and covered in muscle. The other was an inch shorter than Dan with close-cropped blonde hair. Dan’s sword almost cut the larger man in half, giving him no chance to draw his own blade. Unfortunately, the smaller man had good reflexes. In a second, he was sprinting away from Dan.
“Alert!” The panicked blonde screamed. “A native got Erick! I need help right now!”
Before Dan could make up his mind whether to pursue the man, Jennifer sprinted toward him, her enchantments allowing her to quickly cover the ground between her and the running Imperial. Whatever his class was, it wasn’t speed related. The man managed to scream for help only one more time before a pair of invisible force blades exited his chest as Jennifer slammed both of her hands into his upper back. The man collapsed with a wet gurgle as Jennifer shuddered briefly from the mana.
Then, a bell started ringing. Dan ran up to Jennifer and grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her toward the jungle. A foot-long metal crossbow bolt buried itself in the dirt next to him. With a quick glance toward the tower, Dan spotted the head of another oversized crossbow bolt peeking out of an arrow slit. He activated Spatial Shield and pushed Jennifer in front of him.
Dan could practically feel the large bolt as his defensive magic deflected it just enough to miss him. A fraction of a second later, the chunk of metal and wood flared with power as it discharged a spell of some sort into the jungle floor. Evidently, the large crossbow bolts could be charged with spellshards, a useful, if distressing piece of information.
Seconds later, the near miss from a spell that generated a fist-sized ball of acid woke Jennifer up enough to start running on her own. Dan let out a hurried sigh of relief. He might be stronger than usual thanks to his runes, but dragging Jennifer in a half-conscious mana haze under fire wasn’t a great plan for success. Together, they ran in a serpentine zig-zag as they tried to cross the distance to the tree line. It was only five hundred paces, but with ensorcelled crossbow bolts and magical globs of acid striking the ground around them, it felt like a mile.
The entire time, the bell kept clanging. Even if they made it to the edge of the forest, Dan didn’t think that the Tellask were going to just let this go. Unless they could be sure that they lost their pursuit, Jennifer and him couldn’t return to the rest of the camp. If they did, they might lead an enemy strike team to the rest of the squad and endanger the entire mission.
Dan hit the edge of the jungle, but he kept running. From their approach to the enemy camp, he knew that there would be enemy patrols for at least the next couple of miles. Once again, he was silently thankful for his runescripting and intense cardio training. Just three years ago the idea of running four to five miles straight would have been an impossibility, let alone through a jungle while laden with gear.
Finally, they slowed down. Jennifer was sweating and breathing heavily, but Dan was practically wheezing. Resentfully, he stared at her lighter armor as he shifted slightly, wincing at the chafing left by his chainmail through the padded undershirt. Dan pulled out the walkie talkie and pressed the send button.
“Abe, this is Dan,” he said, hoping Abe could understand him despite his borderline asthmatic wheezing. “I need to make an immediate report, over.”
After ten seconds, he repeated himself, frowning slightly at the delay. Then the walkie talkie hissed.
“Dan,” Rose’s voice came through. “Abe isn’t nearby at the moment. What do you have to report, over?”
“We’ve been spotted and are being pursued.” His voice cracked slightly. “That said, we got close enough to see their outer defenses. The landing site is ringed with towers hooked up to mana forges. Long story short, each one of them is going to be able to put out more mana than an archmage. It looks like those are what took down the planes, and I don’t think that armored vehicles are going to fare that much better. The towers appear to be guarded by archers armed with enchanted crossbows and a number of spellcasters carrying spellshards. I’ve managed to sabotage three of them. When they try to channel enough mana to open fire, they should explode.
“If you approach from the Southeast, you should be fine.” Dan paused for another breath. “Unless you have vehicles that are laser or magma proof, I would not suggest attacking from any other direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more of the railguns from the first night. The landing site itself has a large wall around it, so you’re going to need something that can punch through that. We weren’t able to get close enough to see what’s behind it, over.”
“Noted,” Rose’s voice came back after a couple seconds of silence. “You said that you are being pursued. Do you think you’ll be able to shake your pursuit and rejoin us, over?”
From the direction of the landing site, a wolf howled. Seconds later, a series of other voices joined it. Dan shivered.
“Negative,” he replied, sighing. “They have scent trackers, and I don’t know how good they are. We’re going to try to make ourselves scarce. Once you have more details on the attack, let us know and we’ll be there. Until then, Jennifer and I will focus on surviving, over.”
“Good luck, Thrush.” Rose’s voice had a hint of emotion in it. “I know you didn’t need to help us. Stay alive out there, over.”
The walkie talkie went silent.
“Told you we should have stuck to just two.” Jennifer smirked at him.
Dan rolled his eyes back at her and took a few steps into the jungle as the sun finally set, dropping them into darkness.
