Cheep!?

Chapter 162

         Floor by floor the Wyldwalkers cleared the siege tower, progress speeding up every time they did so. Outside of the tower, Prince Nivere of the Greenscale clan rallied those freed up from their own defensive positions by the combined efforts of the two groups, allowing them to speed up.

         Niko let out a long, heavy breath as he stepped out of the top of the Dawr siege tower, stretching his limbs and bringing a measure of calm back to himself. The blood energy that heavily seeped into his body also had an influence on his mind, but one that he was confident in dealing with. It made fighting seem so much more exciting than it ought to be, making violence and bloodshed appealing enough to make him want to throw himself into the carnage all that much more.

         He wasn’t easily subsumed by that, thankfully, given that his Az-Phorus instincts already primed him for such an experience. It was less obvious to him these days, but there was always a background drive to fight worthy adversaries. Those instincts were perfectly natural in his species, though, and after learning some proper management techniques he wasn’t unduly influenced by them.

         The Dawr, on the other hand, seemed almost recklessly indulgent in their drive for utterly wanton violence. Bant’s blood energy only fanned that flame all the more.

         Nowhere was this more obvious to Niko than from his current perch on the wall just outside the top of the siege tower, looking out across the city to the distant defenses. Smoke plumed upwards from each, though on the opposite side of Riizen he could see a great deal more than in other places. That was, he guessed, where the other siege towers were allocated. Given how many Dawr had packed themselves into this singular tower, he wasn’t terribly surprised with how much smoke there was. If nothing else, it seemed that Riizen might have moved more forces there, considering all of the flashes of light and motes of essence visible almost to Niko’s naked eye.

         “The other siege tower is being held in check,” Nivere began as he slid up beside Niko, his gaze sliding to the horizon across the city, “There’s been no word of a breach anywhere, either. The battle is going… perhaps not with the ease one could have wished, but certainly acceptably.”

         Niko turned his gaze to the snake-like being next to him, near azure scales with hints of green glinting in the light. The Yaunz had more than proven himself to be a skilled warrior, and had impressed Niko with how well he could keep up with the Wyldwalkers own tempo.

         “We’ll have to finish off this tower and move to the other one,” Niko stretched once more, crackling noises rolling off of his spine, “Then we’ll just have to deal with the Dawr that are trying to scale the wall.”

         Nivere nodded at that, just as the rest of their entourage were gathering up. Some fraction of the force would remain in defense of this location, but most would now reinforce other areas. Being that only two siege towers actually reached their walls on this side of Riizen, the Dawr were limited in how many ways they could actually siege them. Catapult strikes still crashed against the wall, but without any munitions empowered enough to break through in a reasonable time frame, they’d steadily become a backdrop to the constant incoherent Dawr cries and the sounds of snarling beasts.

         Niko was about to re-enter the siege tower when his Aether Sight suddenly picked up something distant. It lit up his vision like a lone star in the night, suddenly drowning everything else out. With a confused frown, he turned more fully to the wall to the north, one of the least occupied walls. Whatever was going on there—

         In the next moment, that concentrated essence that glowed flickered and then transformed. A very real burst of light flashed into reality followed by a roar. The ground shook, and Niko had to avert his eyes to the searing brightness that had overtaken the wall. Even from as far as he was, he could feel heat against his feathers, even the temperature of the surrounding forest seemed to rise several degrees. It continued for several seconds, with Niko dropping to the ground and, sensing Skye next to him, sheltering the both of them with his wings.

         Niko grit his beak hard and groaned, heart beating frantically as he waited for whatever was happening to stop.

         The all consuming noise ceased as sharply as it had begun, leaving behind sporadic crashing noises and the splintering sound of wood. Warily, Niko raised his head to look in the direction that had all come from.

         When his gaze met where the northern wall had been he had to do a mental double-take. Much of the structure was simply gone from the center bastion outwards. The swath of destruction led onwards for another hundred meters beyond that into the city itself, with wreckage and debris the only thing left for the first third of that. Deeper, some of the structures remained standing, albeit on fire, and Niko could only hope that most of those had been evacuated prior. Moving deeper into the city and the shelters therein was a given for the noncombatants in this city, but he didn’t know how much deeper in those were. Given the line of flames and scorched wood and stone, he didn’t expect that there would be many, if any, survivors for those caught directly in the path of whatever had just been unleashed.

         Niko was surprised to realize that he wasn’t afraid, even after seeing such a harrowing scene of destruction. Wary, certainly, but he instead felt righteous anger, and his glare sought past the walls in search of what attacked the wall.

         There, he could see a sparse force of Dawr, much fewer in number than what lay beyond their own part of the wall. However he could also see a myriad of other beasts, types that Niko had yet to see before. They all wore what appeared to be war paint, however, and their foreheads, shoulders, and other parts of their bodies held what appeared to be the image of a mountain peak, sharp and jagged to a precipitous tip. Their numbers were daunting, and while Niko noticed that there seemed only a precious few over tier four, they were larger by a fair margin than the Dawr force that the Wyldwalkers had been locked in battle with.

         At their head was a great, scaled, winged beast with whorls of smoke stirring from an ashen, smoldering hide. If it gave the beast any discomfort, Niko saw no trace of it, the flying creature’s smoke trailing form emanated power, betraying its identity as a tier six creature. The Wyvern outclassed everything else on the battlefield, and by the sheer arrogance Niko could see in its eyes, it knew that fact very well.

         “Sliverpeak has attacked?...” Prince Nivere whispered words rang loudly enough through the stunned silence following the Wyvern’s attack as to be heard by those present, “But… Why now?”

         “Can Riizen’s council handle that threat?” Ronald asked, “Because we’re definitely not going to be of any use against that thing.”

         The Greenscale Clan’s prince turned his attention back to the others, shellshocked, alongside his entourage. Niko looked to Sasha, who shook herself out of her stupor at the gesture.

         “The Heads can probably do it. But we’d be better suited to holding this wall and routing the Dawr as soon as possible. We can’t just leave our backs to the enemy.” Sasha said, her eyes betraying a slew of complicated emotions as she searched over the devastation on the other side of the city.

         Niko felt Skye hop up onto his back from beside him, a portion of the blood energy that surrounded him cladding her own bark-form. “The quicker we finish up here, the faster we can go help.”

         The others nodded at that and began readying themselves to move back down the siege tower.

         Then Niko felt essence build up once more in the air, with his Aether Sight catching the pull of power.

         “Brace yourselves!” Niko cawed desperately, dropping down and holding tight to the stone beneath his feet. He hoped against hope that there wasn’t another tier six beast around, otherwise they were about to meet a swift end. 

         Instead of a burst of light, though, Niko tasted iron on the air and heard the whistle of a blade slicing through the atmosphere fast enough to sing. With a jarring shudder, excess essence and blood energy roiled through the air, followed by the clang of something large falling to the ground in three distinct pieces. It wasn’t nearly the same world-shaking blow of moments ago, but that was only by comparison. The blow was nevertheless incredibly powerful, and Niko saw the streaking lines of red cut through the ground and buildings farther away, up to thirty meters beyond the city gates.

         Niko immediately rose, leaning over and looking down their side of the wall to see that the gate had fallen down in three pieces. ‘Guess that explains the sound…’ Niko frowned, seeing a figure stride through the now open gates.

         The Dawr Warlord held a pair of blades, both of which quaked in his grasp. In the next moment, the metal began to degrade, falling apart to shattered pieces and away from his grip. The warlord snorted in disgust before pulling out another set of blades, eyeing the surrounding beasts that had set into a defensive, if scattered, formation around him. Those that had been behind the gate itself were maimed in the least, and at worst had been outright massacred. The tier five Dawr gave a sharp-toothed, malicious grin before screaming out in triumphant glee, immediately taken up by the torrent of Dawr that ran into the gap from behind him.

         “Welp, looks like we have to deal with the warlord after all.” Niko said aloud.

         “Uhh… We do?” Dachna asked, “I mean, we can take care of the others, right?”

         Ronald grunted then, “Niko’s right, as much as I don’t like the risk involved. We might be able to distract him enough to keep him from carving through the others.”

         “True… He doesn’t like us very much,” Skye said with what Niko imagined was a grin, though he couldn’t see part of her face through the bark-skin mask that had formed over it.

         The Wyldwalkers quickly and roughly formed a semblance of a plan, with Nivere staring at them aghast all the while..

         Finally, he could take no more, “You all truly intend to fight a tier five on your own?”

         They paused at that, seemingly surprised. Stella was the one who piped up first, “Well, yeah? It’s not impossible.”

         “Yes, just suicidal.” Nivere spat back, “Why can’t you just help defend against the other Dawr?”

         Skye cleared her throat, bringing attention to her as she reiterated, “He really doesn’t like us. He’s going to go for us, guaranteed. Definitely Dachna, if no one else.”

         “What?” Dachna paused, suddenly sitting at much more attention, “Why me!?”

         “Where did you think I got that fancy weapon of yours from?” Skye asked exasperatedly.

         Dachna spluttered, “You stole it from a thrice damned warlord!?”

         “That does explain why he seemed so… interested in us.” Sasha shook her head, “Still, it changes nothing. We cannot afford to delay any longer.”

         The others agreed at that, and Niko cawed to Nivere, “You keep helping with the defense, and if you happen to see anybody high tier, please direct them our way. I don’t know that we can beat him, really, but we can tie him down for a while. Probably.”

         With that said, the Wyldwalkers jumped down the wall, moving from outer platform to outer platform atop Sasha, Thokk, Niko, and Charlotte.

 ---------------------------------------------------------

         The only thing Nivere could do as he watched them move out was shake his head in pure astonishment, and hope that they weren’t about to all get themselves killed.

         “What now, Prince?” One of Nivere’s attendants asked, looking after the group with no small amount of doubt.

         “What else? We find them some backup,” He shook his head, “Come, we must work quickly! Send for runners, we must find Thorne and his group, they might be close enough to help. I doubt we will be receiving reinforcements anytime soon, all things considered.”

         They all nodded at that, with Nivere pointedly trying to not think of all of the lives that might have been lost when the Apex of Sliverpeak unleashed their attack. The wyvern had long yearned for their territory, especially so with their own mountain peak capable of sustaining a tier seven beast. Yet, for all that, he’d never really thought their neighboring mountain would actually attempt to invade.

         The timing couldn’t be worse, either, but he supposed that would be the point of all of this. While his father was tier five, Nivere knew that none of the council were above that. Riizen was the only tier six, and he’d been in seclusion for months.

         “It will be costly…” He murmured with a shudder. Part of him mourned already, knowing that they could defeat the wyvern, but it would certainly cost them a few members. That alone was worth his grief, but he knew that his father would be first among them. Whatever the cost, they had a duty to fulfill.

         And it was with that driving thought, that Prince Nivere moved to do his. They’d have to be a bit more reckless for a while, but the more tier fours they could free up from combat to help deal with the warlord, the better…