Dan ignored the fight in the sky above him. Even if he could have contributed with a combination of gravitational easing and force bubble, he suspected that launching himself into the sky would make him a prime target for elven mages. Ahead of him, a team of soldiers jumped into the hole created by an artillery shell and began setting up a light machine gun.
He charged past them, only to realize that the soldiers still running toward the city were getting fairly sparse. There were still a couple people on their feet, but by and large, they were taking cover and training their firearms on the gaps in the wall where Imperial troops were pouring out. Dan threw himself to the ground as the machine gun behind him opened up.
The Imperial forces coming out of the fortifications had enchanted tower shields that seemed to soak up rifle fire. They marched in formation, about twenty-five abreast, their shields almost touching as they tried to avoid the constant stream of bullets. Even from several hundred paces away, Dan could see the flashes of light as the bullets deflected off of the shields, forcing the soldiers carrying them to lower their shoulders as if they were pushing forth through a hail storm.
Occasionally, a bullet would find a gap in the shield coverage and an Imperial would collapse clutching an extremity, opening a hole in the shield wall. Then, for a brief second while the Imperials tried to wrestle the shields back into place, almost every gun in the field would focus on the gap, killing dozens of men.
Dan frowned; the Imperial’s rate of advance was slow, but it was happening. None of them knew for sure how many soldiers were inside the base, so he was in the dark as to whether the rate of Imperial losses was sustainable. Then, an artillery shell detonated just above the formation, wiping out the first two ranks. Without the shields, the mass fire from the coalition units tore the Imperial soldiers apart, forcing an immediate retreat.
A voice shouted to advance, and Dan found himself moving at a jog along with a huge number of soldiers toward the gap in the wall. Overhead, a pair of elves blurred through the air and slammed into the side of one of the helicopters, purple blades flashing as they cut through it. He wasn’t sure if they could fly or if the elves in question simply had enough strength enchantments to leap into the air and catch the low-flying helicopter.
Together, the soldiers pushed forward into the city, Jennifer following just behind Dan. Inside, modular stone buildings rose directly from the ground around wide stone-paved roads. Unfortunately, the roads were wide enough for war lizards to easily traverse them, as evidenced by the war lizard charging forward to fill the gap left by the retreating Imperial infantry. From side streets, more of the six-legged bears rushed toward them, lance-wielding human warriors on their backs.
Dan stepped forward and launched a Fireball down a side street at a pair of the bear lancers. The blast threw them from their mounts and scorched the bears themselves. Before the bears could regain their footing, Dan slammed a Forcebolt into each of them. He drew his sword and rushed toward them as gunfire interspersed with the occasional higher caliber shots erupted from the main coalition contingent. He doubted that it would be enough on its own to stop a war lizard, but hopefully it would slow it down enough for one of the Apaches to take it down.
His sword flashed purple before it finished off both stunned bears. He felt the mana flow into him and paused as a sixth sphere began forming in his chest. Jennifer stabbed both of the downed men and picked up one of their lances. Almost ten feet long, the haft was made of rune-covered mythril. A look of concentration crossed Jennifer’s face. The runes covering the lance flashed briefly before the spearhead began to glow purple. A manic grin crossed her face.
“Are you ready to kill a dinosaur, Dan?” she asked, tossing him one of the two spears.
Dan caught the lance. “Wait, are you fucking serious? War lizards are covered in spellshields; I’m not even sure if we can pierce them with these things!”
“Loser hits the showers second.” She flashed a mischievous grin as she sprinted back past Dan toward the sound of gunfire.
Swearing under his breath, Dan chased her. The war lizard had already advanced into the gap in the wall. Soldiers surrounded it, firing their rifles, but even where they slipped through the ephemeral plates of spell shielding, they failed to penetrate deeply enough to do serious damage. For better or worse, the coalition forces had killed the Imperials commanding the lizard and it rampaged unchecked and uncontrolled.
Jennifer wove through the crowd of soldiers at high speed. At a sprint, she threw herself onto her back, a smooth plate of force kicking up sparks as she slid under the lizard before stabbing at an upward angle with the spear. For a moment, the haft of the weapon glowed but failed to penetrate due to the almost forty-five-degree angle she held, thanks to the unwieldy length of the weapon. Then, it punched through the lizard’s scales, fountaining blood and viscera down all over her.
Dan shrugged. What was a little more smell and mess at this point? Frankly, lizard blood was probably an improvement. He sprinted toward the creature, increasing the mana to his strength rune and pulsing gravitational easing in order to launch himself into the air. At the apex of his jump, almost fifteen feet in the air, he summoned a force bubble and kicked off of it, leading with the spear.
When he pushed mana into the lance, he could instantly tell that its runescripting was inferior to his sword. The mana felt sluggish in his hands, forcing him to pump more of it into the weapon for noticeably less effect. Still, the combination of his momentum and the magic bit deeply into the monster’s spellshield before eventually puncturing almost a foot into its side.
His spear did nowhere near as much damage as Jennifer’s, but it achieved his goal. He activated Shocking Fist, pouring electricity through the metallic shaft. The giant lizard bucked as its muscles clenched. It tried to whip around and dislodge him, but the spearhead held firm. Dan clenched his teeth as he swung back and forth at the end of the lance, occasional bullets rippling against his spellshield.
Dan summoned a Force Bubble just behind himself and pulled his feet up to his chest. Then he pushed off the invisible ball of force. The haft glowed as he invested more mana into it and sank deeper into the lizard. Blood flowed freely down the side of the creature, staining it an unhealthy ochre. The creature bellowed, its tail sweeping through the coalition soldiers. Another burst of gunfire raked its spellshield-armored flanks.
Marshalling his strength, Dan pulled himself forward and up onto the lizard’s back. It shuddered, likely from another blow of Jennifer’s to its unshielded stomach. Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself forward on his hands and knees, making his way up toward its head. Almost a minute of harrowing activity later, he found himself scurrying past the front weapons platform. Near the lizard’s head, the dinner-plate-sized scales became finer and thinner, allowing more mobility at the cost of durability.
His sword shone purple in the morning light as he brought it down on the back of the creature’s neck. No spellshield intervened as blood sprayed everywhere, and the blade cut a deep divot through its scales. The lizard reared back, ponderously pulling itself up onto its hind legs as it balanced on its tail. Dan hung from the hilt, swinging freely as the creature bellowed once again.
This time, the soldiers’ gunfire actually dealt some damage. The lizard’s underside lacked the heavy spellshields of the sides and back, and the scales themselves were thinner. Even so, a single rifle bullet did little more than rip a divot in them. Of course, the soldiers were firing far more than just one rifle. The lizard’s underside began to erode as thousands of shots stitched up and down its bulk.
Frustrated, the lizard slammed back into the ground in an attempt to protect its vulnerable underside, jarring Dan against its back. Even through his armor rune, he could feel the abrasive edges of the scales bite into his skin. Pulling himself back up, he jammed his sword back down through the gap he had previously hacked in its armor. Even with all of the sword’s enchantments, it still didn’t penetrate the creature’s spine, deflecting slightly off of the hardened bone.
Frowning, Dan stepped back and shot a fireball into the gap in the monster’s neck. He managed to jump backward before the spell detonated, the pressure wave from it carrying him further onto the lizard’s back. It staggered to the side, listing into a nearby building.
Taking advantage of the creature’s distraction, Dan approached the gaping hole in its neck once more. Really what he wanted at the moment was a tank. Although he was dealing damage on the creature’s back and it couldn’t really reach or dislodge him, the sheer beating it could take was more than impressive. Still, even with its insane vitality, the deep, charred hole in its neck was clearly slowing it down.
Dan jabbed his sword into its back to brace himself and launched a Lightning Stroke directly into its exposed and blackened spine. With a strangled croak, the creature stiffened and fell to the ground, its legs giving out under it. Dan grunted as he weathered the jolting of the collapsing monster and stood up. He hadn’t collected its mana yet, revealing the injured creature was still alive.
He jumped into the gap in its neck and brought his sword down on its spine. The cutting edge glowed a deep violet as he poured mana into it and sawed back and forth. He could vaguely hear cheering from the coalition forces, but he ignored them as he focused on the back and forth motion of the sword. Bone shards from the shattering spine cut his skin, and the orange blood burned him, but Dan ignored it and kept cutting.
Then it slipped through the hardened bone. Spinal fluid splashed around him as Dan severed the exposed clumped grey nerves. Above him, the 30mm cannon from a helicopter tore through the wing of a wyvern, dropping the gigantic reptile into the city below. He wiped the ichor from his sword on the metallic scales of the lizard and pulled himself out of the crater in its neck.
The mana hit him, trying to drown his reason in pink clouds of euphoria. Dan frowned, swaying for a second as he built up walls out of his willpower and shook it off. The pleasure was still there as he jumped down from the war lizard’s back, but it was distant, no longer pressing down on him.
Jennifer walked up next to him, covered in the reptile’s orange blood. She looked him up and down before shaking her head ahd chuckling to herself.
“You broke mine, so I’m taking this,.” She grabbed the lance he had shoved into the side of the lizard and yanked it free. “Have you considered that it’s in poor taste to showboat that much? It would have been much more chivalrous for you to just let me have the kill.”
“Really?” Dan snorted, glancing at the broken spear sticking out of the lizard’s stomach. “After the way you took advantage of me at rummy, this is you getting off lightly.”
“A real gentleman would let me shower first regardless.” She sniffed, a twinkle in her eye as she attempted, poorly, to adopt a look of faux outrage.
Dan rolled his eyes before looking deeper into the Tellask base. “As bad as you smell, and as much as I would like to grant you that honor, I really need that shower.”
Overhead, a flight of cargo planes began air dropping light-armored vehicles into the area that the coalition forces had just cleared outside the base as cargo helicopters landed, disgorging more soldiers. In the base, more wyverns launched into the air to meet an incoming flight of mixed F-35s and F-16s.
“Double or nothing?” Jennifer asked hopefully.
