Hold The Line

The first wave made contact with the boundary lines three hours and twelve minutes after the first report had reached them. John had positioned himself at the center, where the densest cluster of risen mages had been reported. Vallya's last update before the boundary breach had placed the strongest enemy forces directly along the central front, with the eastern and western columns serving as flanking pressure. That assessment had not been wrong. But as the undead horde prepared for impact, it became increasingly clear that their numbers were too great to divide the battle into such neat, orderly formations.

The columns of undead had spread wider as they approached, and the assault did not divide to meet each group individually — once they made contact with the border of the Barrier, they spread out like a wave breaking upon shore, seeping through the divide between realities with relentless pressure.

The eastern column hit a heartbeat before the others. Maera and Mithra were already moving when the alert came through John's ring. The nekos bounded toward the empty space between the Legion forces and the Order knights even as the groups themselves moved to close the gap. Heaving mounds of muscle and sinew tore through the line between reality and the Barrier's enclosed space, swinging rusted cleavers that cut through plate armor like practiced butchers.

The western mass arrived in the next breath. Balls of interlocked bones rolled into the GPA's lines, too durable to be shattered by the volley of spells that met their arrival, too heavy and oversized to be stopped by any single mage. John heard cries from a half-dozen men pulled under one; their bodies were strong enough to survive the weight, but that still left bony hands clawing at them, sharp daggers piercing their flesh.

Lerianna moved before John finished giving the signal. The bunny-woman bounded toward the western boundary in long, ground-eating leaps, her gauntlets and boots flaring with stored holy energy as she drew back mid-stride. She cleared the distance in seconds, and the first strike she made not only shattered a small crater of enchanted steel — the radiance imbued in the blow disintegrated a full hemisphere of interlocked bones, all but immobilizing the sphere.

Aclysia and Vallya followed a little more slowly. Aclysia moved with blade drawn, the new armor John had crafted for her catching the dim afternoon light in dull, functional flashes. Her shield met the first sphere she could find, and she held her ground with strength that impressed him. She gave ground, her heels grinding through the packed dirt, but she did not topple, and her blade cut away any of the grasping hands that tried to pull her under. She lasted long enough for streaks of pink and blue fire to sear away the bones holding the orb together, and from there, the alliance mages began purging the remaining limbs with extreme prejudice.

John could not admire their work past first contact. The center arrived in the beats that followed the first arrivals. John felt something in his head begin to ache, a distant pang as even more undead started to filter through. No sign came that the Barrier was giving way; there was simply a sense of wrongness, as if the sheer amount of undeath pouring across the boundary lines had reached a tipping point. And given what lay before him, John could understand why.

The first thing that came through the center was a death knight.

Not the lesser kind. Observe put him at Level 78, armored in plate that had been crafted by hand and runeforged by necromancy, his axe wreathed in a sickly violet flame that burned with an inhuman cold John could feel from twenty meters away. He was followed by a wedge of armored skeletons in disciplined formation, and behind those came the first of the central column's risen mages — a gaunt figure in robes that had been black before the dirt and the years had worked them gray.

"Hold the line! Guard your brothers and sisters, and drive them back!" Moira's voice carried over the line, and the Order knights moved as one, golden radiance shining along the edges of their blades. Moira met the death knight herself, her shield taking the blade of his axe without flinching, her hammer driving into the joint of his shoulder. The knights around her gave Moira a berth wide enough to swing her hammer in arcs, but close enough to keep the armored formation of skeletons from breaking through. Etriyya struck into their midst with a frenzy John had scarcely seen from her, her blade cleaving two of them and her shield driving a third back before it could reach her Warden.

The risen mage noticed Etriyya's fury at the same moment John did. Something foul and sickly-looking grew over its hand, a pestilence given form, and the pale figure's arm began to draw back.

John moved before the spell could be released.

Wind rushed underneath him, carrying him high and over the formation of skeletons to reach the risen mage behind. Three of them moved to intercept, weapons raised high, cutting at the air where John's path would lead him. John parried the first blow while a burst of wind carried him higher still, over the arcs of the latter two entirely.

The risen mage at the back of the formation raised both hands, the sickly swell of brown-green mana shifting into something more solid. John's sword ignited as the Rune of Disruption channeled at full strength.

-878 Mana!
1,987 DMG!

Whatever the spell had been, John caught a whiff of decay wretched enough to make him gag as he passed through its dissipating form. The Fang of the New World rendered the spell inert before it could plague John, and the arc of its swing carried it through into the risen mage's chest. Not enough to put the shambling figure down, but enough to begin chipping away at it.

As John was drawing back to continue the onslaught, three more imposing figures carried themselves through. Two more resurrected mages and a second death knight — this one taller and wider than the first. They were mere feet away, one mage on each side and the death knight nearly within arm's reach to his right, and at once, John was nearly surrounded.

"I'll take him to go, then."

John wrapped his hand around the risen mage's throat and channeled his Purifier's Muse as the newly arrived death knight began to swing. A bolt of lightning struck the spot where John had been standing and the center of the cluster of skeletal guards in the same moment. The skeletons behind the death knight were scattered by the bolt, and by the force of his arrival — John slammed the risen mage into the ground with all that he could muster.

672 DMG!

It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough for a creature of this strength, and its hands were already glowing. Worse, John's extraordinarily conspicuous landing had drawn the attention of the guard and the death knight alike.

"Moira! Swing!" John shifted his stance, moving to the side of the mage rather than directly over him, and gripping the figure with both hands instead of just one. He hurtled the risen mage at the death knight while it was still occupied, while Moira's holy radiance was too dangerous to be turned from, and the mage struck home. The death knight did not struggle long to stay upright, but it clattered forward enough to drop its shield, and in that moment Moira's hammer struck true.

"Be banished from the Lady's sight, abomination!"

Party Member: 2,900 DMG!

A massive chunk of the death knight disappeared, but it was still standing, and the ones John had left behind were rallying forward to join them. John vaulted into the air to avoid the swings of four skeletons that had regained their balance and turned their attention to him. The Order took advantage of their distraction by the unexpected bolt — Etriyya and a half-dozen other knights pummeled the back line with bolts of divine fury, searing two skeletons to ash and filling John's eyes with golden brilliance.

John was already using the wind to maneuver himself in the air, aiming to land as gracefully as he could manage beside Moira. The pacing of the battle made the pivot feel like an instant and an eternity at once, as though he could count each beat of his heart, even as it tried to hammer its way out of his chest. John couldn't spare the time to observe the battlefield as a whole, but there were signs enough to tell him it was looking grim.

The three separated battle groups had spread to meet the sheer numbers of their foes — Order blending with Legion to the east while they spilled over and fought side-by-side with their GPA allies in the west. The Legion had abandoned all attempts to fight outside the Barrier, putting every ounce of their discipline and training into holding the line.

And from the west, the screams.

"This is no time for conservation. We have to hold. We have to," John snarled as he landed, blade already moving.

At his side, Moira's hammer matched him blow for blow. The elite undead had already recovered its stance; it did not suffer the disorientation or confusion that came from the pain of a mighty blow. All the same, its shield and blade could not match their combined efforts past the first strike, let alone the third or the seventh. Bits of bone and armor sheared away one by one, damage notifications flashing by John's eyes until they stopped at the same moment the armored warrior's spine was broken by a backhanded hammer blow. Three vertebrae crushed to dust, and the still-twitching bits of grayed flesh and reanimated tissue spasmed on the ground a while longer before going still.

"Lady watch over us, bar the evils of this world!"

Moira stepped in front of John before he quite saw the spells coming their way. A dome of golden light erupted around them and the nearest Order troops just before the graying mist touched them. It fizzled and died away where it touched Moira's light, but where it reached those she could not protect, the results were immediate and gruesome. A few Order knights were able to ward themselves, to varying degrees of effectiveness. Others were less fortunate. Their skin began to blister and boil as they screamed, hastily chanting healing spells to bring the mercy of relief even as the spell tore its way across their flesh.

John twisted two of the rings on his hand, not taking his eyes off the continued tide of enemies pouring across the Barrier's boundary. His skull was beginning to throb, slightly. Whether it was a sign of the Barrier fraying under the strain of so many breaching it or something more natural, he didn't waste time wondering.

"Maera. Vallya. I need you here."

Neither of them was the first to arrive — that title went to Kim, who slipped between the few remaining skeletal guardians with grace and dexterity that would've made her father proud. Her blade hacked away at two of them as they fell, and although the damage was not enough to end them, their bodies did not reform. One's arm lay twitching and trembling in the dirt; the other collapsed as both of its shin bones were severed in a single strike. Kim continued onward, engaging the resurrected mages before they could gain ground.

"Onward, Order! This unnatural filth must be purged from these lands!" Moira gave a loud cry, rallying the Order knights that were still in fighting condition. Etriyya echoed the cry with even more enthusiasm, and soon a swarm of plate-clad mages were rushing past John. He held himself back a moment longer, eyeing the crowds on each side, giving himself space to work and for his allies to approach safely.

Vallya slid smoothly into the open air just above and to his left, her eyes darting along the front. "Master, what do you need?"

"I need your mind again, Vallya." John grimaced. "Things look dire, and we can't afford to go softly."

"It's yours," Vallya swore without hesitation. She flew a little closer, and though the technique did not require direct contact, John appreciated the touch of her hands against his cheeks in the moment before it activated.

Twin Soul Resonance: Mind – Form, Star Guardian.

The effect was radical and immediate. With his Observe passive, John had gotten somewhat used to seeing the background noise of ambient mana around magical items and people, but adding Vallya's abilities to his own redoubled the effect. The undead resonated with a sickly presence that wafted off them as strongly as their putrid scent. Moira shone with a light that nearly blinded him to the actual radiance of her shield and hammer. Even the air around them was thick with a crimson tint that discolored the battlefield. John had to focus on a breathing pattern just to bite back the sensory overload.

"What's the plan, Master?"

"We need immediate firepower."

"I can definitely help with that!"

"Actually, that's what Maera's for."

"Nyaa, Myaster? Whatcha need?" Maera asked, her voice a little more hyperactive than usual. She'd bounded over as fast as her legs could carry her, but her eyes never stopped wandering along the clashes just beyond where they stood.

"Just a second. Then you can get back to helping the others," John assured her. His palm touched on Maera's forehead, and his Purifier's Muse pulsed once with the touch.

Purifier's Muse Acquired: Light of the Lady

"Perfect. Go get them, Maera!"

"Yeaaaahh! The Lady watches over us, nyaa!" More of the Order's golden light blossomed along Maera's armor as she charged back into the fray, running on all fours. She was so low to the ground that John lost track of her in the crowd — though he could track her by the path of skeletons and undead being tossed off their feet, usually accompanied by a blinding flash and a crack loud enough to be heard over the din of war.

"Kitsune fuel for a catgirl's blessings?"

"Let's pray that it's enough."

"Was that a pun? Because if it was, I will end this union right—"

John glowered at her through their shared mind and set himself to work on the battlefield once more. Vallya's giggles echoed in his head as he surged forward, joining the Order troops where they had re-engaged. The risen mages were casting spells while the second and far larger death knight filled the spot left by the first. Its oversized mace heaved through the crowd with enough force to fling a handful of soldiers into the air with each blow. Moira punished the creature each time it turned its attention away from her and onto her men, but the crumpling sections of bone and armor did not hinder the creature nearly enough to slow its assault, and each moment wasted was another second the mages were channeling.

But the Order troops had done their duty — they were the vanguard. And while John was preparing to join the fray again, a certain Slayer had made herself known in their section of the battlefield.

Already covered in minor wounds from head to toe, blade covered in gruesome trophies from carving her way across the front lines, Kim stepped into the back lines of the incoming undead with such liquid grace that her movements almost seemed choreographed with the abominations. The stream of skeletons parted around her powerful strides, and where they attempted to resist, her blade cleared the way.

Kim's blade was glowing like a furnace to John's enhanced vision, a deep crimson that dropped to near-black at the edge of the steel. When it cleaved through the first risen mage, the spell died on its fingertips, its arms going still before they had even hit the ground. The follow-up strike decapitated the mage before it could lift its stumps to defend itself, and Kim moved to the next target in the same motion.

But while Kim was dancing among the back lines, the front continued to pour through. The size and diversity of the incoming creations was startling, even now, and John realized with a chill that what he had assumed were the forward vanguard were merely the scouts — those creations human-shaped and compact enough to reach the Barrier first.

First came strange, mucky creatures that took a vaguely humanoid form, their bodies consisting of some sort of oozing gray flesh that poured over itself with each movement. Behind them came giants of stitched-together flesh and skin, their bodies pierced through all along their arms and shoulders by great lengths of enchanted chain that rattled with each step. They stood nearly twelve feet tall, their limbs wider than John's torso, and the thick chains rattled loud enough to be heard over the clamor of battle. One of them drew its arm back as soon as it cleared the boundary line, launching a chain toward Kim with precision that mocked its lumbering physique. The others followed suit.

Kim dodged the first, the second, the third — the fourth clipped her, the fifth connected with her blade. The chain swirled around the Slayer's sword with speed enough to whistle, and the giant began to heave. Kim held her ground — and her blade — but as she struggled to wrench it free, the sickly-colored heaps of human flesh were approaching with sloshing steps.

"Better hurry, Master. Looks like these ones are designed to target sword users..." Vallya's tone lilted playfully in a way that filled John's mind with visions of fangs and claws. "I wonder why they might be doing that?"

"Kim!" John ripped through the air without hesitation. Wind Shear carried him to Kim's side and he touched down at the same moment his blade bit into the nearest of the creatures. His sword chunked into something solid as it struck, hinting at a skeleton or other substructure beneath the surface, but it was the ooze itself that proved stubborn against his strike.

287 DMG!
287 Bonus DMG!

The ooze wrapped around his blade and slowed it through sheer friction and surface area, like a bullet trying to dig through sand. Worse, the flesh clung to the steel with a ferocity that surprised John. He tried to withdraw his blade and found it trapped every bit as firmly as Kim's sword now was within the chain.

"Enough!"

"Vile creatures!"

In mirrored motions, John and Kim heaved upon their blades, and a flow of mana set the weapons free with a blossom of power. John's blade burst with golden light copied from Maera's spells, and the brief gap between the weapon and the clinging flesh let him yank free, though the creature continued its trudging gait toward him.

Meanwhile, Kim's gritted teeth brought more promising results. The red of the Slayer's blade intensified in hue, solidifying as if the blade were leaking mana into the air itself. The next pull she made cut the chain cleanly, carving through the enchanted steel as if it were mere butter. She preserved her momentum and turned on her heel, carrying the swing through to cut one of the slimy figures shambling her way in two. The muck did not so much as slow her blade — and unlike John's strikes, the graying flesh found no purchase on Kim's edge, sloughing off the steel gracelessly as Kim tore through its chest cavity.

"Oh my. Do you think she can teach you how to do that?"

"No, but she can do it for me. We all have a role to play here tonight, and we have to play it well."

"Kim! Here!"

John grabbed the nearest amalgamation of flowing putrefaction and, as its mucky flesh latched onto his palm, heaved with everything he had. The motion lifted it off the ground and spun it toward Kim. The Slayer's blade flushed its deadly crimson and the gray mass fell in two. What remained sloughed off John's gauntlets lifelessly, plopping onto the ground with a messy sort of noise.

Even as John used the renewed space to start forward, darting between heavy lengths of chain that slammed into the ground hard enough to churn up the earth, two more chain-wielding giants breached the Barrier and trudged toward them. Kim's eyes flickered to John. Her blade never stopped flashing, even as she gave him an understanding nod.

"I'll handle these creatures; you deal with the chain weavers!"

"Right!" John eyed the towering horrors and forewent his blade entirely this time; he careened into the nearest one fist-first. A burst of golden light erupted on impact, and so did the creature's ribcage. Its arms flew wide as the shining gold burst outward, casting its chains away from its body and exposing it to the follow-up when John's blade shot like an arrow into the giant's dead heart. The blade twisted in a smoother spiral than any human arm could manage, opening the creature's chest like a blossoming rose.

Before the dead giant could collapse and settle its weight down onto the chain embedded in its flesh, John summoned a gust powerful enough to launch the massive chains upward and toward the next giant over. The links rattled to wake the dead as they levitated and soared toward the other hulking giant. John swirled the ends wildly, entangling them with the other giant's chain, knotting the ends together, and then heaved.

The second giant toppled into the first, falling along with its slain brother. John didn't waste time on the disabled chain-wielder; with a half-dozen others readying further strikes, every second was precious. He cut three clean slices along the towering giant's spine as he leaped to its head, then kicked off its skull at the last moment. Its own allies slammed their oversized chains into their former ally mercilessly, crushing its ribcage and splattering a part of its skull. The creature fell, dead or disabled, while John shot through the opening left by the giants now working to heave up their chains again.

Light and steel flashed in harmony, one after another, each blow carving away flesh and chain with extreme prejudice. The wind carried John high enough to reach the most vital spots on each creature, tearing apart weak spots in the stitching that bound their bodies, severing heads from spines, and cleaving bodies in two to deprive those that survived of enough working space to swing their massive arms above the ground effectively.

"You don't enjoy this the way you do the Barriers, do you?"

"I don't," John admitted in the space between blows. "I don't particularly enjoy the Barriers, either, but they're necessary."

"I don't like that it's hard for me to understand why." John could feel the frown forming in the mind sharing space within him. "But I like that I can see it from your perspective."

"My 'perspective' is protecting everyone I can."

"I know, Master. That's why I like it."

Any hopes John had of monitoring the battlefield were quickly put to rest. The control he needed to exert to keep himself one step ahead of the chains as he flew through the air was too precise to spare a moment's attention. He measured the state of the armies around him by their size and the volume of screams. It was ineffective. It was haphazard. It was terrifying.

It was all he could manage until the hordes had thinned, until the last of the undead were falling to the weary blades of those around him.

Moira's Order troops pushed forward to aid Kim, in time. The Lady's blessings eradicated those that had not already fallen to the Slayer's precise cuts, all while they worked around the growing mounds of giant bodies that John was leaving in his wake. The flanks of their Barrier were not assailed so harshly, though they were hardly spared.

The Legion held ranks through sheer discipline. No number of fallen comrades seemed to rattle them, no mass of enemies grew so dense that their courage faltered. Julianna herself played a role not unlike John's own — despite the mass of her blade and body alike, she moved with the grace of an acrobat between their enemies. Giants fell in two pieces, sometimes more, at a single slash from the bold woman, and even the grimy masses splattered when the weight and strength of her strikes dispersed their semi-solid forms.

Shishun played her part on that eastern line. The Legion's rigid formations risked breach each time the sheer number of the undead caused them to overflow around the eastern side or to briefly pierce the overlap between the Order and Legion mages. Shishun found her purpose in precise, mobile clean-up duty. Even the giants and the occasional gray mass that slinked around the Legion's numbers could not stand to a dozen throwing knives hurled in unison, especially when lightning began to arc between their handles, frying what flesh was not ripped and carved out by the exquisitely sharp blades.

Ten minutes in, the GPA lines began to unravel. Lerianna and Aclysia alone were not enough to hold the lines in the face of the alliance's mounting losses, and it was only Sophia's arrival — heralded by one final report that the swarm outside was no longer growing, only continuing to work its way inside — that saved them from collapse. Her wings briefly flared from solid to a translucent gold as she embedded herself in the heart of the western flank, arriving by Aclysia's side with an instinctive coordination that left them back to back against the swarm breaching the alliance's defensive line.

From there, she became a force of nature. Still mostly fresh, with her only exertions so far being the few flying wretches that had come her way, Sophia carved a path through the falling lines. The Harpy Whirlwind lived up to her title; she did not so much unite the GPA's scattered mages as she did cleave such a wide swathe that they regained a measure of breathing room. Her blade and claws tore through the rotted masses mercilessly, and each wound inflicted on her, each crimson line drawn between the lines of her armor, only fueled her furious rampage further.

The battle raged on for nearly an hour, even after the intensity of the incoming pestilence began to dwindle. The undead swarmed through the boundary of their border like a bell curve — led by those agile enough to push ahead, pushed to the limits by the greater mass falling upon them, and then pressed for time and effort by the dredges that followed in their wake. It was a race of attrition to reach the descent of the bell curve before their own casualties grew untenable.

They won the race. John was not so certain about the battle itself.

When the last of the undead had been slain or left a shambling mass on the ground to be executed at leisure, John found himself at the western edge of the Order's forces. Sophia stood not far away, breathing in deep, ragged breaths, the crimson glow of her eyes slowly fading. Lerianna and Aclysia weren't far. Maera and Mithra came from the east, bearing far more wounds than John had hoped for. Less than he'd feared, but... not by much.

"Oh my — here, here," John cooed, kneeling as Mithra limped her way over to him. She was smiling through the pain, but it was a forced smile, something felt for his benefit, not her own.

"Let me help." Moira had appeared from the Order's ranks without fanfare, and she took up position on the other side of John, her hands glowing as she laid them on Maera and began to mend the neko's flesh.

"Tend to your own, I can handle this much," John assured her. "I didn't use up much mana. Maera's tricks aren't too expensive."

"I need you to conserve whatever you can. Besides, Maera is one of my own now." Moira's lips managed a slight twitch, but smiling was beyond her tonight. "And we need our heaviest hitters as ready as they can be. There's a second wave forming behind the first. Larger. New Barriers are forming — we think the necromancers are pushing ahead. They mean to bring this to us themselves."

"Any word from the others?"

"Adantia says a half-dozen more Fateweavers were slain. They think they drove her off, but... well, it'll take her time to stabilize their lines before returning here, unless we are driven to crisis ourselves. Kwang intends to hunt the necromancers pressing our front line. My father is on his way, though. We will have aid, if we can make it to the Lord Protector's arrival in one piece."

"Then that's what we'll do." John forced his lips to remain still, holding the grimace inside as Mithra mewled up at him.

"Myaster? We gonna be okay?"

"We're going to be okay," John promised. He worried the words would come out uneven, but his voice held steadier than he'd expected. Mithra nuzzled herself into his chest as John tended to the worst gash, the one that had brought her to his side with a limp.