Chapter 1677: Ambushed
Ayame’s heart slammed against her ribs.
The tear sat a hundred meters to their flank, a wall of absolute black wider than any [Shinkai Mon] her sister had ever opened, but she knew.
On a deep, instinctual level, she knew.
This was Kaede.
And the timing...
’She waited for us to engage.’ They had committed to the fortress, every fighter on the slope, Morgana in the sky, Aurora’s shields stretched forward, and Kaede had timed this to the second.
"Hostiles incoming!" The shout tore from her throat, and the charge on the fortress shattered as Quinlan’s women pivoted toward the flank. Strikes flew at the darkness: fire, light, solar heat, cursed energy.
Above, Quinlan and Morgana abandoned the sky in the same breath, dropping toward the field.
The darkness answered before they landed.
Tens of thousands of arrows shrieked through the seam in a wave that dimmed the sky, each shaft trailing the pale glow of mana-buffed elven fletching, and the volley splintered Aurora’s hastily raised shields.
The barrier held for a breath before the second wave punched through the fractures, and then it was every woman for herself and each other. Sylvaris’s constructs fanned wide to catch the flanks, armored backs covered the exposed, and blades cut shafts from the air.
Then Serika stepped forward, the brand on her abdomen blazing crimson through the gaps in her armor, bright enough to cast shadows behind her, and the Reservoir answered the draw before she’d finished reaching for it.
Wind that wasn’t her own yet now listened to her, gathering around her fists as Quinlan’s element poured through the bond, fusing with solar heat until the air between her knuckles rippled and warped.
"Everyone listen up!"
The shout carried across the formation, and through the bond, every mark in Quinlan’s family answered at once.
Crimson pulsed from woman to woman, brands and sigils burning from one end of the line to the other, and the conviction Serika was pouring into her voice traveled through the blood to every friend of hers before the words left her mouth.
"Never forget what we are now! You are not the same as before! [Solar Eruption]!"
Serika’s punch met the next wave. The attack ripped outward with a whirlwind compressed behind it, and the wall of solar force and howling wind turned thousands of mana-buffed arrows to ash in a flash of gold that lit the hillside brighter than noon.
Ayame moved up through the arrow rain, her katana flowing in fluid arcs so clean they looked unhurried, each stroke turning clusters of shafts away from the women flanking her. Her mark pulsed in time with Serika’s as she drew from the Reservoir.
"That’s right! Keep the Reservoir full with the blood of those who dare underestimate us!"
The brave general of Zhenwu’s fire nation and the second-in-command of the Bloodfather stood at the front of the formation with the arrow rain breaking against them, and the ranks behind them were already moving.
Every bonded mark on the field was burning. Blossom had vanished into shadow with her claws drawn. Vex’s pentagram eyes were lit and her sword was tracking the breach. Lucille was pulling from the Reservoir with her axe up, the brand on her sternum bright through her plate.
The bond these women shared carried the same decisive fire through every mark at once. The shock that should have followed an ambush at this scale had no room to take hold, because the two at the front hadn’t left any, and the family that shared their blood fought the way they always had: together, committed, and with no one standing idle while their sisters bled.
Below the rain, dwarven heavy infantry marched through the seam in lockstep.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
Blacksteel boots hit the scorched earth in perfect unison, hundreds of them, and the rhythm carried across the slope like a second heartbeat forced into the chest of every woman standing against it.
Elven arrows flew above their heads and they didn’t flinch, didn’t break stride, didn’t look up. Blacksteel plate hummed with layered shields, rank after rank after rank pouring from the darkness, and a war chant rolled from their throats, deep and guttural and older than the fortress behind them.
*"Forge and fire, blood and stone—"*
It started low, a bass rumble from the shield wall that traveled backward through the column row by row.
*"March together, die as one—"*
Shields rose in unison, blacksteel locking into a wall that reflected the girls’ attacks off its surface, and behind those shields thousands of voices picked up the verse without missing a step.
*"What the mountain gave, the mountain takes—"*
*"Forward, forward, till it breaks!"*
"You’re killing my ears, you damned screechers! [Rending Tempest]!" Morgana’s hands twisted the instant her feet hit the ground, and the violent explosion of wind that ripped from her palms tore across the dwarven advance hard enough to scatter the front ranks sideways, shields or not. "Now stand up and kill my captors!"
"Only part your foul mouth to form spells," Quinlan ordered in the same breath, and the earth answered.
Magma tore from the ground in a roaring arc that followed the entire width of the dimensional tear, climbing thirty meters high on both flanks before curving inward to meet above the seam.
The churning curtain sealed around the portal in a half-dome of molten stone that glowed orange-white from within, and Quinlan fed it everything he had.
Earth hardened the base into a rampart thick enough to stop a siege. Fire poured into the interior until the heat alone killed the air around it.
Wind compressed along the outer surface in a sheath that deflected the arrows still raining from the fortress behind them, and lightning crawled through the curtain in bright veins that popped and cracked with every pulse, turning the wall into something no living thing could walk through and survive.
He couldn’t close Kaede’s portal. But he could cage it.
The dwarven infantry that had already crossed were stranded on this side, cut off from reinforcement, and the war hymn died in their throats as the voices carrying it from the other side went silent behind thirty meters of elemental hell.
The silence lasted four seconds.
Slashes carved through the magma from beyond, silver-bright and precise, each one cutting a seam into the molten curtain that cooled and split in its wake. Necrotic force followed, rolling through the fractures in waves that killed the heat at its source and turned living orange to dead grey wherever it touched. Iris’s eyes narrowed.
She knew that signature far too well.
Elven wards hit the weakened sections from a hundred angles, elite-grade magic drilling through the cooled stone with coordinated precision.
Then a single strike hit the center of the wall, and the force behind it felt stronger than any level 74 he’d ever seen produce.
’Who...?’
The barrier blew apart, cooling rock spraying across the slope in a hail that cratered the earth where it landed, and the shockwave that traveled through the ground carried a weight every one of them had only felt in the primordial realm.
Quinlan’s wall had lasted seconds.
Through the breach came the dwarven army in full, shields locked, and undead surged ahead of them, rotting bodies hurling themselves at the nearest target with the mindless violence of things that had already been spent.
Behind the wave came the commanders. Kaede Fujimori walked through with her demonic blade at her hip and the Fujimori elders flanking her, Chizuru and three more elders at her shoulders whose age had done nothing to dull the intent behind their eyes.
Aelindra followed with her council elves in silver-green plate, black hair catching what light remained, dual curved blades drawn and purple eyes scanning the slope.
Gorthrax the Eternal came next in featureless black armor pitted by ages, blue fire burning in his empty sockets. The ground died in a circle around his boots as Vozen and the Drowned King fell in at his shoulders.
Silver brought up the rear with his foxkin elites, the old fox’s stare sweeping the field as his scouts fanned into position, hateful eyes already searching for two people in particular.
Then the last figure stepped through, and the ground cracked beneath a weight that hadn’t existed a day ago.
The dwarven king stood nearly twice his former size, his frame swollen with mass that his skin hadn’t finished stretching to contain, grey-white flesh split at the joints where veins of black pulsed beneath the surface.
His remaining eye burned wide and too bright, the pupil blown, and the fury behind it had curdled past anger into something chemical.
The bandaged hands were gone, replaced by fists wrapped in skin that cracked at the knuckles and seeped black, and the muscles beneath his plate shifted in ways that said the transformation was still settling. His elite guard ringed him in heavy dwarven plate, and not one of them stood within arm’s reach.
"Did you think I’d let you ravage my lands and level up until you decided to come for me, Villain?!"
