The Druid and the Igniad Ch. 08

Lu shielded herself with her armored forearms, and she heard the ping of an iron arrowhead deflect against the thick iron wrapping. Gern strafed towards her and extended his defensive range to include her.

"I'll take care of those archers!" Lu called to Gern over the din of the hailing arrows.

"Go get them!" Gern called back, focused on maintaining his maneuvers, "I'll catch up!"

There were too many arrows coming down to jump for it, so Lu wove her way through the warriors huddled under their shields. She had to squeeze between denser huddles, her armor scrapping against theirs. The warriors took heart as they recognized her.

"We're pinned down!" One warrior complained.

"We are with you, Gaia-child," an older warrior said.

"I'll clear the way," Lu announced as she came to the front line.

"Good luck!" A young warrior beamed next to her, showing a few missing front-teeth in his smile.

Lu darted out from the cover of their shields, and grabbed towards particular arrows in flight, burning them to cinders with gesticulations of her hands and an incantation under her breath. She cleared her path as she ran, and soon outpaced their ability to aim with her zig-zagging course.

Ranks of skull-tattooed fanatics with spears advanced down the slope towards flanking positions that would catch her allies in a pincer attack once the arrows halted, but she had to take out the archers first. She could not fight them all at once.

She ran between the enemy formations and leapt over the warriors who ran out to intercept her. She came to the wall, and threw up a wave of fire at the archers atop it. In her fury, she forgot they were protected from the flames by the magic of the ward crystals they wore about their necks, and she gasped with surprise as they shot arrows down at her.

Lu tried to jump up onto the wall, but she was heavier with the armor than she was used to. She crashed against the face of the wall, then scraped down to the ground. She rolled away from the spot at once, and several arrows stuck into the ground where she had been.

She dashed toward a nearby gatehouse, which was the mouth of a dirt road that had been carved into the mountainside. "Nulut aem mina!", she recited, and gestured at the wrought-iron gate. The metal groaned and glowed cherry-red. She bolted toward it and made a crossing motion with her arms as she willed the heat in the metal to gather in two lines, mimicking the "X" she made with her arms. The concentrated energy melted the iron white-hot along the lines, and the gate broke against her kicking heel and clattered into four pieces.

Lu ran through the gatehouse and leapt up steps that brought her to the top of the wall. She kicked two soldiers down to the gravel with her iron-clad feet, then cleared some room down the wall, sending archers tumbling off as she charged. She ran all the way around the mountain peak on the circular wall, encountering only sentries on the far side, whom she ran past. Lu could feel spells being woven against her from the castle, and she chanted counters to their malice, wildfire threatening in her every breath as she once again began smashing ribcages with her iron kick.

She came back to the gatehouse and sent another foe tumbling off the wall, then saw that a horde of armored enemies was marshaling out of the mining tunnels carved in the mountain. They glinted with enchanted crystal shards.

Fanatical men and women charged her with their weapons tined to strike, and she whirled this way and that, deflecting their strikes against her armored forearms as her legs swept low, toppling them as they came.

She saw that Gern and his warriors had immobilized the formations that had maneuvered against them with invoked brambles of blackberry. Gern drove his warriors forward, leaving the entangled foes behind in favor of gaining higher ground. They came cheering triumphantly towards the broken gate, unhindered by archers.

The heavily armored enemies from the tunnels formed defensive lines at the bottleneck, and Lu leapt down off the wall to meet them. She launched herself at one with a roundhouse kick, but her blow was met by a shield that was set with a crystal shard. It absorbed the brunt of her force, though the man wielding it was pushed backward, despite his grounded stance.

She unleashed a flurry of strikes as they surrounded her, but her kicks ineffectively bounced off the enchanted shields. They pressed in close around her, locking their shields together. It was all she could do to parry their spear-thrusts against her armor, and she could not protect herself from all angles. Spear-points gnawed at weak points, and she felt the bite of the blades as they began glancing cuts on her skin.

Gern had just reached the gatehouse, and was fighting to break through. He saw Lu surrounded, and his heart sank into fear as he lashed his staff viciously, trying to reach her through the gauntlet of armored foes with cries of rage.

Lu's purple eyes blazed with intensity and her hair of smoke flickered with sparks. They might be protected from fire, she thought, but that wouldn't matter if they couldn't breathe. She sang a verse in the ancient tongue that was of hearth-fire and home, then held her breath and channeled the elemental power from the fire in the hearth of the earth to choke them. From a fissure in the rock, a plume of volatile gases erupted into red flame like a spreading flower, and she fed it with more and more magic, letting it grow. The armored warriors staggered in the noxious gases and the heat, even as they were not burned by it. After a few moments, they wobbled and collapsed from lack of breathable air, passing out.

Lu kicked down two of the warriors who held the chokepoint of the gatehouse, and Gern struck down the third with his staff. The rest of the warriors poured through, and they gained a foothold on the other side of the wall, though the armored enemies who remained regrouped.

Arkis took out commanders with his bow from atop the gatehouse, and Chief Gartham carved destruction with a pair of waraxes, chiseling through the enchanted armor of any who stood against him.

Gern and Lu outpaced the others by leaps and bounds, and fought their way up through the crystal grove. She felt her connection to her grove and the fire within the mountain clearer than ever before, and drew its energy up through the rocks. Fissures formed at her step, and steam vented out of the earth in her wake. They ascended freshly carved steps in the cliffs at the top of the peak, knocking down the guards stationed there. At last, they came to the double-doors of the castle, and Lu melted the hinges off. She kicked the doors in and they toppled to the flagstones of the feasting hall.

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