Two thousand orcs clustered in a group on the far side of the stream. It was only about twenty feet from the elves’ shore to the orcs’ shore, and the water never got more than chest deep for a good five-hundred-foot stretch. All along that stretch, the elves had placed what few stakes they could, made from disassembling Leo’s only official ship, the Averia Reborn. While the orcs had marched forty miles across land, Leo’s force had sailed up the river and dropped troops off, giving them time to disassemble the ship and prepare slight defensive positions.

            In a somewhat shocking change from just yesterday, the morning was already hot. Leo suspected it was because they’d moved into the radius of the Light node, but it might have been just—or partially—normal weather change as well.

            Molly, Felix, and Meryl had joined him, along with Val and Captain Seahaven. The four hundred and fifty soldiers they had were spread out behind him, as well as the fifty sailors whom Captain Seahaven had ordered join them as militia.

Cal and Tea had ‘scratched’ two more ships, so everyone was pretty sure it was going to be about eighteen hundred orcs and two hundred of House Orsini’s sailors against a hundred and fifty elite-leveled troops of Leo’s and Meryl’s, as well as three hundred and fifty mixed sailors and militia. Felix was down raising earth as fast as he could, going through the last of the essence potions at a crazy rate, to make a chest-high wall just behind the stakes. He was nearly half done, and if they got enough time, they had the essence potions for him to finish.

            Although Cal and Tea had spent the last few hours attacking the orcs’ positions as they’d assembled from the sky, to keep them from getting any sleep at all and kill just a few more—Leo wished he’d spent even more on essence potions because his dragons were out.

            “Why’re you here, by the way?” Leo asked Molly from where he sat astride Wolten.

Molly looked like an anime character at the moment. She was dressed in a very sexy short, leather skirt and leather armor, with stylized leaves hanging from the shoulders, and she carried Roothammer across her back, the massive wooden weapon turned diagonally just so it didn’t drag when she walked. She must have a decent number of levels and a very high Strength score to be carrying that hammer so nonchalantly. She looks like Cloud.

            “Why wouldn’t I be here?” the beautiful, tan-skinned, green-haired elf asked back without looking at him, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

            “Well, aren’t you a priest of a, um, transnational religion? Isn’t this unfairly taking sides?”

            “In two nations where the religion was equally welcome, I would sit out. But against orcs, whose dark god Ikrahkt swore to enslave Eturia, well… My goddess personally ordered me to take the field against these blighters.”
            I think she means ‘blighters’ literally, given that they wreck farms and despoil anything not a fetid swamp.

            “Well, every high-level person helps, so I’ll make sure to give an extra thanks to Eturia this coming Sunday.”

            “Why Sunday?” Molly asked, perplexed. Leo had no idea if the religion of Iluvin Eturia had a specific day that was more commonly used for worship.

            “Never mind, sorry. Weird reference.”

            A fly buzzed by.

            Leo figured they’d have hundreds in a bit, but given the few orcs dead of lightning strikes on the other side, and the lack of a latrine over there, they were already getting quite a few. War wasn’t pretty anywhere, but medieval warfare was unusually gross… just smaller-scale.

            He turned to his other side. “How much longer do you think, Meryl?”

            She met his eyes, her one glowing blue eye always a bit of a shock. Val had been upset when Leo had picked Meryl as his ground forces commander, but Meryl simply had more experience and training both. Val was acting as Meryl’s lieutenant commander.

            “Trying to pick patterns from their sad excuse for soldiers’ shambolic chaos is challenging, but they’ve got eight clear sub-commanders, each with their own warband, and they’re positioned as if they’re ready to charge at any moment. The sailors are the only real reserve.”

            Leo looked at the sailors. They’d formed two semi-coherent lines and were simply waiting.

            “Well, I think the cretins have decided on their lead-off team,” Meryl said, spitting to the side.

            Val pointed, and Leo followed her finger. One group of milling orcs, which included a few wargs and a small number of huge trolls, was moving forward. An odd troll with bony spines protruding from it was leading them down to the shore.

            “That’s probably the closest thing to a shock group they have,” Val said.

            Meryl gave a sharp nod but pointed to the side. “That group of buggers is their real heavy hitters. I count fifty wargs, and their riders have actual armor and good weapons. Everyone on their side will be operating significantly below capacity from hunger, physical exhaustion from the march, and sleep deprivation, but still… that group will hit hard.”

            Leo followed her finger and caught sight of Kruegar for the first time. The orc was now almost ten feet tall, which led Leo to assume that the quarter-demon had leveled quite a bit. He carried a massive two-handed sword of black metal, with dark energy around its edge. He was dressed in plate armor painted crimson. But his head was visible, helmetless, the four tusks marking him for who he was.

            Damn. He was a monster before, and he’s obviously gotten stronger and better equipped.

            Leo heard a yell from the other side, and the troll-led group started to run toward the stream.

            “Heavies to the front!” Meryl screamed. That was the cue for Leo, Hugh, Zir god help them, and other high-level people to move to the very front line. Lily would be just barely behind them, ready to heal.

            Leo rode Wolten to the front and dismounted. He wasn’t as good of a mounted fighter yet.

            He patted Wolten on the side. :Protect: Leo thought at his mount, envisioning Lily. Wolten ran back and took up station near the tiny elf duchess.

            “Cavendil’s Coterie, front and center!” Meryl screamed from behind them.

            Her soldiers were going to pay a butcher’s bill—it had been determined that as the only strong ‘infantry’ they had, they would hold the center.

            “First militia, right. Second militia, left! Everyone else, bows loose!”

            The elite archers formed a second row, and the militia who weren’t ordered to the front or the wings prepared their own hunting bows to their sides.

            “Jarl’s sailors, left reserve!”

The men moved into position.

            Meryl lowered her voice. “Val, get to your men and be prepared to charge—if there’s a breakthrough, you’re our only real answer to stem the tide.”

            Val nodded, her expression fierce.

            The orcs and trolls waded into the stream.

            “Fire!” Meryl called. The archers began firing, the elite archers in tight but odd patterns to account for the varied special abilities of some of them, and the militia archers haphazardly. Still, against targets wading through water, trying to reach them, it began to take an immediate toll.

            But not a perfect one. Orcs had lots of Health, and the few trolls had a ton of Health and natural regeneration. Arrows were almost pointless against the trolls, in fact—Leo watched as one just ripped one from its chest with a bellow, and the brief torrent of blood slowed and then stopped as the wound closed.

            Joy. But that was the purpose of the ‘heavies’ being down at the front—to slaughter and disrupt at a level that would make it almost impossible to mount an effective breakthrough of Leo’s lines. That way, the archers could slaughter until they ran out of ammunition.

            Cal and Tea flew overhead. They made a pass, a lightning breath attack from each frying an orc and badly hurting another six or seven from the water-dispersed electrocution. No one stopped to help the badly wounded orcs who were swept downstream.

            The orcs and trolls made it past the center, and a second block of orcs, led by a huge one with four arms—likely another quarter-demon orc child of Grakith—waded in. Their advance was almost unmolested as the first group took the brunt of the attack.

            Then the fight reached Leo.

            A huge troll waded up from the stream, barely onto the shore, carrying an eight-foot-long club.

That one has to die. Leo burst into a run, hearing Hugh bellowing a hundred feet away. He rushed the massive troll, which raised its club, towering over him.

            Slowly. From Leo’s perception, the troll was pathetically slow. Leo ran forward, stabbing the troll’s belly and then dodging around it. He slammed his shield’s edge into the face of an orc as he went, and it reeled back, grabbing at its smashed nose and cheekbone. Then Leo slashed again, hamstringing the troll, which fell to the ground. Leo knew it would just heal, but…

            Zir rose from the shadows next to troll, even as the troll pushed itself back to its feet, and jabbed his daggers into the neck, left and right, of the troll as it struggled to its feet. Zir yanked outward, and a crimson fan of blood exploded across the battlefield like someone had set off a sprinkler.

            “Move!” Leo screamed, and Zir disappeared back into the shadows.

            “Glad the little murder-kin is on our side,” Leo said.

The troll collapsed to the ground. Leo backed away from a charging orc, caught that orc’s club swing, and then kicked him in the leg with an inertial weapon empowered kick. When the orc stumbled back, Leo turned and overhead-chopped the struggling troll through the back of its neck.

Its head came free, rolling away. The sprinkler turned into a firehose briefly, and one of the Coterie soldiers behind Leo was absolutely drenched in red, spitting as some got into his mouth.

But Leo and Hugh could only handle so much, and the soldiers of Cavendil’s Coterie also had their hands full. Orc bodies were piling up, but the pig-faced brutes just kept coming.

Zir appeared again, barely dodging another troll swing—with the aid of his thick shadow pushing the club away—and slashed the Troll’s femoral artery open. Leo sliced the arm from an orc, stabbed another in the gut, and managed to reach the troll Zir had wounded. Leo dodged the left hook and leapt up and stabbed it in the eye and deep into the brain.

But at the same time, the backhand caught him before the troll went down. Leo rolled, trying to get to his feet. He took a club swing to the shoulder, felt a white-hot flash of agony, and heard something crack.

Orc tribesman clubs Leo for 6 damage. Leo fails his Toughness check against blunt trauma. Leo has suffered a break to his shoulder. -5% to dodge, -80% to accuracy and damage with right arm weapons.

 

            Damn! I really need to work on my Toughness score!

            He redirected a spear thrust with his shield and up-kicked the orc with the club, his supernatural Strength enough that the orc who had hit him dropped backward, out cold, into the stream. Finally managed to knock one out in a single blow.

But the wound to his own arm was taking him out of the fight, and Leo scrambled back. Immediately, the section he had been defending started to bend inward, despite the talented soldiers around him.

“Lily!” Leo screamed, and when he didn’t immediately see her, he touched himself on the arm and used his own, slower, regeneration.

It took a long thirty seconds before he could reenter the fight.

Two orcs died a mere five seconds apart as Leo re-entered the fray, trying to hold the front.

Then wargs were coming out of the spray of the water.

Leo rolled away from one snapping warg, yelling, “Bad doggy,” and cut the front foreleg from another entirely, taking a brief workmanlike satisfaction from the chaos that caused in the enemy charge.

Leo telekinetically grabbed stones and threw them into the path of his enemies to cause confusion and managed to down another warg. For a brief second, he held back the charge by himself.

“I don’t know if I’m fast, per se, or just incredibly busy,” Leo commented to no one as he slung rocks with his mind, opened arteries with his sword, and knocked people out with his shield. “I’m like weaponized ADHD.”

Then Kruegar tromped out of the stream, darkness trailing after him. He swung his huge, black sword, covered in a dark aura, two-handed. Leo sidestepped and angled his shield just so to provide for a perfect counterattack, but the hit nearly ripped the shield from his arm. Leo was thrown off-balance, changing his attack to a dodge nearly immediately. He almost managed the dodge, but not quite, as the sword continued past Leo’s shield and grazed his side through his magical armor.

“Well, hello,” Leo muttered. “We meet again. Or whatever cheesy line you prefer.”

Kruegar was smiling at him as he walked him down.

            Leo dismissed the damage notification without really reading it and took a few steps back, touched himself on the arm, and used regeneration.

All remaining damage on Leo Evans is entropic aggravated damage and cannot be healed by your level of regeneration. Regeneration remains ongoing but is having no effect.

 

            Kruegar laughed in the voice of Krathek, a heavy, dark tone, and spoke in English. “It doesn’t work that way, simp-boy. Entropy is the magic that stops all that cheating healing and makes you face your mortality. Will you run now? Tell your girlfriend you failed? Because I assure you—You can’t win this.”

            Leo felt his blood running down beneath his armor, and he was genuinely… concerned, at least. But he was also glad to hear that Audrey hadn’t run into Kruegar yet. It gave him hope for the future.

            Assuming he still had one, of course. Kruegar came forward again, swinging the massive sword precisely back and forth, keeping Leo at bay.

            He’s swinging that thing like a toy and blew through my own supernatural Strength. How strong is he?

            Kruegar suddenly sidestepped and slammed his blade into one of Meryl’s soldiers, who was literally cut in half, viscera spraying across his allies.

            Fuck!

Leo changed directions and swarmed in while the blade wasn’t protecting Kruegar. But Kruegar knew the same kinds of hand-to-hand combat that Leo did and lashed out with his left leg, using the overextended sword as a counterbalance. Leo took a glancing hit to the shoulder from Kruegar’s giant steel sabaton. He rolled away from the hit and healed himself as he rose, but Kruegar had cut another two soldiers down in the moments it had taken Leo to heal.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

An arrow slammed into Kruegar, piercing his armor, but Kruegar pulled a potion off his belt and quaffed it.

“Yeah,” he said in an evil-jolly voice. “It’s totally unfair. I love it. Feel free to surrender anytime, by the way. I’ll sell you rather than kill you. It’s the best deal you’ll get, pansy. But you have to pay for causing me to lose my boys.”

His boys?

Leo watched Kruegar’s movements, trying to analyze them, as Kruegar started forward again. By now, warg riders were spilling left and right through the gap Kruegar had created, a gap that was expanding.

I have to move now! I need to do something insane, something he won’t see coming.

Leo dashed forward, moving as fast as he could. He used telekinesis, pulling a rock forward. But he didn’t try to strike Kruegar—his telekinetic attacks weren’t strong enough yet to do much through the quarter-demon’s armor. Instead, as the sword came at him, he leapt, landed on the rock, and leapt again.

            Leap attacks in fighting are stupid, Leo thought to himself as he sailed through the air. He let go of his first rock and grabbed another from the riverbed with his mind, pulling it back toward Kruegar as he hit apogee and came down on the other side. Half a move ahead. He’ll swing around clockwise, since that’ll bring his dominant hand around faster.

            Leo landed and crouched as the huge sword swung at him, his own rock pushing upward and striking the blade, pushing it higher in turn. Kruegar’s strength and size worked against him with the powerful strike as it took him a moment to recover.

            Leo was now a full move ahead.

            Leo feinted upward with his sword, and Kruegar shied away, stepping backward toward Leo’s own lines after the strange set of moves. But the attack had been designed to get Kruegar looking away, and Leo kicked his potion belt, hard and precise, shin first.

            All of Kruegar’s remaining potions shattered, dripping down his side.

            “Take that,” Leo muttered as he was fighting. “I’ve struck you where it really hurts, the pocketbook.”

            Kruegar let go of his sword, still off-balance, and backhanded Leo. Leo caught the whole blow with his shield and went sailing back, unwounded, but he was now being forced away from his own line and into the stream. And the hit had given Kruegar time to reorient and rearm. The over-tusked orc charged Leo, into the water, swinging his sword.

            His next hit forced Leo deeper and damaged his arm through the shield, and the one after managed to nick Leo. Moving in water was slowing them both, but Kruegar was slowed less due to his size and weight—it was removing Leo’s advantage faster.

And Kruegar knew it. He roared, rushing forward for what he obviously hoped would be a killing blow, his sword in mid-swing.

Leo threw his sword at Kruegar’s face and flung himself backward. He grabbed his sword with his mind, steadying it at eye level as Kruegar charged. Leo landed in the stream. Kruegar’s eyes widened as he tried to stop and turn both, but the blade managed to prick his eye even as he did, and then draw a deep furrow along his face as Leo pushed.

A warg came roaring at Leo where he was lying in the shallow edge of the stream, and Leo had no choice but to let go of the mental grip on his sword and pull a rock forward to protect himself from the animal’s jaws. He rolled away and stood, hoping against hope that Kruegar would be briefly disadvantaged as Leo grabbed the orc on top of the warg and threw him, then grabbed the orc’s spear from the saddle and turned.

A bugle sounded and Val’s ghost wolf riders slammed into the breakthrough Leo had notably failed to prevent. Warg and wolf both started to die, but then the militia wings started to close in on the orcs.

Kruegar stood in the ankle-deep water, holding his hand over his eye. Blood was leaking down past his fingers.

“Well, you survived this round,” Kruegar said in a deeply amused tone, his sword carried carelessly in one of his hands.

He turned and bellowed in Avernian, “Cavalry retreat!”

Kruegar looked back at Leo again, that superior smile on his face somehow despite the four predator-tusks that moved when he talked. “But you’re wounded, and I’m pretty sure we got the better of this engagement by a wide margin. The next charge will break you. I’m going to go get healed—hope you enjoy that wound in your side.”

“And thanks for the magic sword,” Kruegar said, holding Leo’s sword up. “I’ll be sure to gut someone you care about with it.”

Kruegar stomped away, wading back across the stream, as Leo fought back to his own lines, holding his side, wondering how the hell they’d survive this.