Cheep!?

Chapter 160

         Niko tensed as three siege towers trundled towards them, the two towards the back of the line were in far greater condition than the closest one. The first siege tower was scorched black as charcoal, thoroughly battered, and let out shrill squeals from its brutally punished gears and pulleys that worked within its internals to keep it moving.

         But move it did, in spite of all of the punishment that it had taken. Niko would have commended them on managing to keep the dang thing going, if it wasn’t currently moving towards the section of the wall that they were on. It almost felt like the siege tower in question had a grudge, but of course it was just an inanimate object. It definitely couldn’t hold an actual grudge of any kind. All the noises that sounded like angry snarling were certainly only grinding gears, and there definitely wasn’t something eerie about the way the tower seemed to flex and shift as it moved. That was all definitely just just due to structural integrity being quite low.

         ‘Ugh… I mean, is it possible for an object to be possessed? I never checked if ghosts are actually real.’ Niko wondered, and upon observing the blood energy that occasionally leaked from the siege tower, he wondered if perhaps that wasn’t too far off. Tens of Dawr corpses had been chucked out from the back of it, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Whoever was left in that tower was guaranteed to be absolutely topped off with blood energy. Bant’s gift would finally be coming into play for them. The only way that Niko knew of to really put the Dawr down when they had that was to do near instantly lethal damage to them.

         That would be… difficult to manage against champions in melee, but at least plausible against hobs. Niko figured they would be learning if there was any kind of capacity limit on the blood energy in this fight.

         “That thing looks like it’s going to collapse at any moment,” Dachna spoke pensively, “I wouldn’t get in that deathtrap.”

         “I’ve never accused a Dawr of having a strong survival instinct,” Skye replied, amused, but equally perplexed.

         Ronald grunted, “The next volley’s coming. Let's see if anything happens.”

         The Wyldwalkers went quiet at that, and surely enough, heard the loud twang of a dozen ballistae go off. Mithel had delivered the ballistae crew all packages of flasks that would, hopefully, survive the high-speed projectiles journey. However, as the bolts punched through the middle and lower sections of the siege tower, it was clear none of them were used on this target. The rods pierced through the wood with the already exposed ribs of the supporting structure getting hit in several places.

         With a loud groan, the tower slowed, before crackling sounds began to sound out even amid the battle. Screaming Dawr within the tower howled something fiercely, and Niko saw the reddish energy that would otherwise be adorning their bodies vent out of the cracks in the tower. It leaned precariously to one side, but stubbornly held on, seemingly by the sheer willpower of its occupants alone.

         Skye’s bow twanged three times in rapid succession, empowered fully by her pattern as she did so. Niko could barely even see the arrows she fired, but knew where they hit by the explosions from the Firestorm Flasks that Mithel had attached to them. They went into the guts of the tower at the base, and the fire expanded outwards in the blink of an eye. With Mithel directly enhancing them, the explosion was more than twice as large as normal.

         The already leaning top half of the tower suddenly gave away, a torrent of blood energy bursting from the middle of the tower along with the fire. It fell forwards with a slow ponderance at first, as if it wasn’t sure which way it was going, but then picked up speed like a hammer blow. It crashed into the ground across a multitude of traps, mines, and barricades, several meters ahead of the last most-recent fallen tower. What explosives it had fallen upon detonated, but much of the impacts were a distant secondary to the way the tower crumbled and shattered like an overcooked loaf of bread being smashed with a hammer.

         Cheers ran up the wall, as Niko gave a wry look to Skye.

         She shrugged, “It looked like it needed a little extra push.”

         “Seems so,” Thokk rumbled, “It appears that they are using that energy to keep the towers together?”

         Niko looked back to the wreck, seeing the reddish hue still clinging to parts even as it burned anew, “Peck if I know, but it seems like a good guess.”

         “There’s only two more towers on our side.” Ronald stated, but rather than looking hopeful, seemed strained, “I don’t think we’ll have the armaments to keep them off the wall, this time.”

         The others followed his line of sight, seeing the last two towers moving forwards at a pace much greater than before. Niko frowned at that, before focusing his Aether Sight on the first of them. The answer became apparent, as Dawr goblins worked with a pair of shamans in each of the lower three floors of the tower, pushing a many-geared mechanism with blood energy empowered bodies. Though he couldn’t hear them, Niko saw the facsimile of their expressions cast in essence, furious and with bared teeth, as they pushed and pushed. One of them fell over, trampled under foot instantly, releasing blood energy and essence almost immediately. All of that energy was manipulated by the shamans, placed into the workers and whipping them into a greater frenzy.

         They also threw something out into the air, a dust of some sort, but while the dust was laced with essence, he had no idea what exactly it was. The effect was pretty clear, as he was fairly certain he could hear the howling of the Dawr from afar.

         “They’re doping up the Dawr responsible for moving the things with actual drugs and blood energy,” Niko couldn’t help but grimace in distaste.’

         “I can’t imagine that’s good for their health,” Mithel stated sarcastically.

         Niko knew she was joking, but added on anyways, “Any of them who die are fed right back into the rest of them.”

         That brought any follow-up banter up short, but the silence was filled in as the towers and several Dawr squads got closer and closer. The skirmishing teams pulled back beyond the walls, and the ranged combatants got ready to let loose. While the chain of command was fairly loose, everyone would hold their first volley at least until orders came. Some had greater ranges than others, but quantity held a quality of its own.

         “Ready!” An authoritative voice shouted, empowered in some way to be audible across the wall, “Aim!”

         Niko inhaled, essence lacing his Carrion Call pattern and lungs. The others who had applicable ranged attacks all prepared them, and those that didn’t held a shield in order to help counteract any retaliating fire. Skye, Niko, Mithel, Stella, and surprisingly Thokk all had methods of attacking from afar. Dachna, Sasha, Ronald, and Charlotte all lacked such options, but were more than capable of helping to ward off returning fire.

         As the Dawr passed markers that were more visible from the all than the approach to Riizen, the call went out loudly, “Fire and sustain!”

         Niko blared out loudly with a machine-gun retort of noise, the cacophony raining down on the frontal ranks of the Dawr. He could tighten the cone and do more damage, but the debilitating effects were more useful, considering he wasn’t the only one attacking. Arrows struck downwards, piercing into lesser Dawr or limiting mobility in hobs and champions. Without using even more flasks, Skye’s damaging abilities with her arrows declined considerably. Her pattern was much better suited to melee fighting, but she’d never really neglected her ranged discipline.

         Beside her, Mithel took a small, scoop-like implement on an extendable stick that Niko didn’t know the name of, and chucked flasks outwards. Their momentum and distance was much greater than anything she could throw by hand, and seemed to be quite accurate, given how the Sticky Flask smashed down onto a hob and expanded  rapidly, growing outwards and entangling several of his fellows. She then swapped to another flask, and launched it at the same target. It wasn’t quite on the spot this time, hitting next to them, but the flask exploded into flames anyways, clinging to the sticky solution and burning even hotter for it.

         Stella’s method was much simpler, simply bringing up a bulky hand crossbow, loading it with a bolt and attached grenade, and aiming high. She didn’t really seem to be aiming, but then, she didn’t really need to. Her first shot hit the hull of one of the siege towers, but did little more than scuff the surface. The second, however, hit a gathering of Dawr, the explosion sending shrapnel through soft flesh and outright killing the lesser goblins. Hobs found themselves maimed, but champions were only speckled by the shrapnel. ‘Only’ being purely subjective; Niko was certain that he wouldn’t find having metal bits of twisted scrap sticking out of his body as mere speckling.

         The lumbering sloth-bear actively conjured stone from nothing, but from what Niko could see, the workings of that were a fair bit more expensive than working with regular stone. Luckily, he also had a supply of said stone nearby, and after creating a hardened core that resembled a spear more than anything else, wrapped it in the loose stone he had in a pile beside him. Given the size of said pile, he’d have many shots. Then, Thokk sent the spear flying forwards with a forceful application of essence, launching it straight at a group of Dawr. Like an air-burst bomb, the projectile exploded just before reaching them, with the biggest spear punching straight through a hob, and the remainder of the stone slivers shredding their surroundings.

         They were far from the only team doing significant damage, the many holes in the all open and disgorging projectiles and abilities down onto the Dawr army below. Nearly half of the entire Dawr group had been culled to this point, Niko noted, but they showed no sign of stopping. That much concerned Niko, and he silently wondered if they would have to kill all of them to get them to retreat. He didn’t understand what they hoped to accomplish, given that even if they got to the wall, they certainly wouldn’t have the numbers to take the city. Were they hoping to have one of the other flanks succeed? Niko doubted heavily that the already weakened forces of the other sides would have any more success.

         Perhaps the one that had the ridiculous numbers of siege towers, but even so, that didn’t change the numbers they could field. And Riizen’s council was made up of tier fives, with Riizen himself being tier six. Surely, they knew that?

         ‘What’s the point? Just kill as much as possible for Bant?’ Niko didn’t know what to think about that. It was at least a possibility that the Dawr were just that aggressive and dumb, given that they were firmly considered to be in the category of monsters.

         He shook his head, ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough. They’ll be at the wall shortly.’

         The siege continued, the distance between the wall itself and the towers decreasing rapidly. Constant ballistae shots rained down upon the towers, but even the ones with flasks on them didn’t seem to slow them down. The first of them was horribly damaged, but as it passed the thirty meter threshold, it seemed to speed up even more. Niko heard the fevered howling of Dawr even from where he was, and saw the foot-soldiers all rally behind the pair of towers. The combatants focused their fire on the weakened tower, hoping to bring it down before it could make contact with the wall.

         Just as before, it vented blood energy, looking not too dissimilar to a wounded organism, rather than an inanimate object. This time, though, it didn’t break, even with explosion after explosion rocking the outside and inside of the tower. It would make contact with the wall to the far right of them, whereas the mostly undamaged siege tower was almost coming straight at their position.

         When only a handful of meters remained between the towers and the wall proper, several serrated spikes, hooks, and braces were revealed, either pushed forwards from within the tower, or unlatched and locked into a horizontal position. The towers sped up more at the very end, with a burst of blood energy rumbling through the structures. With heavy impacts, the damaged tower slammed into the wall, breaching through ports, and even managing to punch through the wood in some places.

         Bracing, the Wyldwalkers were still nearly thrown from the wall when the other tower smashed into their section of it. They’d slammed the port closed, but it had proven no real barrier to the serrated mooring hook that punched through it. The Wyldwalkers all prepared to repel the invaders in the next moment, as several others in other ports either moved to assist, or continued to pepper the enemy below.

         Niko could hear the howling Dawr on the other side of the tower’s walls, and charged up a Carrion Call to his maximum, tightening the cone considerably.

         Then Mithel and Charlotte threw sticky bombs and projected webbing at where the ramp would drop. In the next second, Niko heard other ramps all descend and slam down into where the various holes in the wall were, but theirs only sounded with the rabid howling of trapped goblinoids. With his Aether Sight, he could see them whipped up into a frenzy, the drug-dust in the air suffusing their lungs. They smashed at the ramp to no avail, and some even turned on each other in the choked confines of the tower.

         Yet, no matter what they did, the ramp would not descend.

         Niko looked to Mithel and Charlotte with a look that was all of impressed, surprised, and also mildly put out. “I was looking forward to a good ol’ melee, y’know?”

         Skye snorted and smirked at the trapped goblins while Mithel said, “Well, I mean, it’s not like we have to give them any more places to get onto the wall, right?”

         The Az-Phorus did have to admit, begrudgingly, that she was right, but he still wanted a good scrap. He watched the Dawr go upwards and downwards when it became clear that the ramp wasn’t going to work, instead moving to other levels of the tower that were able to leave. The sounds of battle rang out above and below them on the wall.

         “I have an… idea?” Ronald said, almost hesitantly, “It’s kind of crazy, though.”

         The Wyldwalkers exchanged glances, with Dachna saying only somewhat sarcastically, “Well, I’m always up for crazy.”

         Niko followed Ronald’s gaze to the sealed ramp, and immediately made a cooing, “Ohhhhh,” sound with a nod. “I think I get it.”

         “Let's get this unsealed,” Ronald nodded seriously, “We can do a lot more damage if we hit them from the back.”

         Stella grinned beside him and nudged him with her hip, “That’s only a little crazy. It should work just fine!”