Rewritten by the dark rash of dawn, the frosty sky slowly fills with colour above fortifications frantic with activity, its light chopped and fanned by the shadows of soldiers preparing The Line for defence. The Line is an unbroken series of forts stretching three-hundred miles from the impassable mountains in the north and five-hundred miles from the marshes in the south, and almost joining in the middle.
It was built simultaneously from north and south to hurry the construction, but the Night Elves have attacked just in time to stop the two linking up so there's a gap of several miles in the middle, which takes the form of a raised road. The raised road is as long and straight as an outstretched belt, linking the two sets of fortifications and originally intended as a foundation for the last stretch of forts but now manned heavily by Samarian soldiers.
Sig tampers with an improvised magic trick of his own construction, Squad and Anya watching him with trepidation. "I don't think that's such a great idea," Anya warns the Dwarf, who's liberally mixing chemicals.
"Don't worry, it's only the illusion of jeopardy," Sig assures them, winking as the device explodes in his face. Stroking his singed beard like a philosopher, he points to the heavens, confidently shouting. "I've made another discovery!" as he coughs out some soot. "If only I could monetise my brilliance. Revenue stream?" he snorts out a laugh. "More like a revenue river! ...Maybe I should have some safety procedures, though."
"That feels like bolting the stable door after the horse has legged it and exploded," Squad jokes, high-fiving Anya.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am...because the answer would disappoint you," Sig smiles, then sighs. "But this is a serious problem. A similar accident happened in Racambad and half of my audience were outraged: we had two complaints! My friend, lifelong nemesis, infamous supervillain and occasional co-conspirator The Puppetmaster wrote a damning review of my show in The Daily Complainer and he's never had the guts to apologise to my face...not even through the medium of the puppet! Though I did appreciate the even-handedness of the other press coverage," Sig declares, holding up a newspaper frontpage with a large picture of his face, clearly doctored to make him look evil and, below it, the headline: GUILTY BASTARD! "At least they let me tell my side of the story in the headline."
Anya smiles. "They really caught your likeness."
"Not in appearance, but they certainly captured my personality with the headline," Sig agrees.
There's a hush of appreciation and Elizabeth Clay, daughter of the emperor, approaches Squad and shakes his hand. "It's good to see you again, spectre." Her eyes flicker out to the field, where the enemy wait in silent, cobwebbed patience. "We can certainly use you."
"Your father says I've to stick with you—"
"And protect me?" Elizabeth Clay completes his sentence, with a smile. "Don't worry. I don't need protecting, and there are no restrictions on your movements. You've to go wherever the need is greatest – and that's an order."
She lifts up her hands to draw the attention of the soldiers.
"First of all, I want to introduce myself to you: you do not know me, I do not know you. But to beat this threat we must work together and therefore we must understand, and have confidence, in each other. I'm going to be the leader of this Empire one day, though hopefully not for many years, and I know every person here has been to the door of the furnace, witnessed it and then marched into the flames. I'm here to walk with you and to tell you that we're in it together. The future of this Empire is being forged by the blood of our friends, our colleagues, the people you know, and yourselves: you have planted eternal memorials to the strength of your friendship and the wrath of your enmity."
Standing before them, Elizabeth feels the ranked battery of eyes on her and is amazed by the great deeds that have been carved into history by these faces. Normal faces. The faces of people in the street.
"You've all seen magical artillery, how it lights up the darkness and illuminates all the obscure places. This war has lit up the Empire, illuminating situations we've never seen before and we aim to put these things right. Let's make it a land fit for heroes; let's make it a cause worthy of the sacrifice. If we lose this position, we lose Tyria. The Line must hold. If we can't stay here alive, then let's stay here dead. For Tyria! For Samaria! For the people and their cause!"
A cheer erupts from the defending soldiers as the Night Elf armies close in.
*
Colonel Talbot's now legendary Territorial Defence Legion, immortalised by the fighting retreat from the enemy which saved the Samarian Army, hold the centre of the raised road, about a mile or so from the fort occupied by Elizabeth Clay's forces. With them are Sima Chan's hastily assembled legion of Jiangese guerrilla fighters, accompanied by Lu and Mazer, who've just arrived.
"I don't believe they would refuse to fight," one of Talbot's officers tells him, looking at the Jiangese. "They can see it's a simple choice between right and wrong."
"They've just lost their homeland," Talbot tells him. "It's not about right or wrong. It's about having something to believe in." He looks down the empty and mounting road as if measuring something in himself, eyes focusing on the young girl approaching the Jiangese soldiers. "Let's hope they have faith in us and that we have faith in ourselves: that the days of muddling through are over and the time for confronting wrongs is here."
Mazer doesn't know what Lu is going to tell the Jiangese soldiers to convince them to fight, but he's seen her inspire children to give up drugs, when it's the only comfort and support they've ever known, so he's filled with a quiet belief in her abilities. As she approached the Jiangese contingent, she looks so small and vulnerable, Sima Chan stepping forward to meet her. Mazer doesn't hear what's said but Lu lifts up her hand, holding it out in front of her.
Sima Chan raises her own hand and, with a hesitant miner's lamp of touch, makes contact with Lu's palm; as she does so, a look of delicate and curious horror passes across her face while brief, flitting memories of her people transfer to her from the child, animating her thoughts with their suffering, their hopes and their deaths. Without instruction, many of the other fighters crowd around and lift their hands to join the touch, their armour rustling sadly like fallen leaves, all inspired by the sights and sounds and feelings of their ancestors, integrated into history like a good steel screw set in its proper place in a machine.
"What are they doing?" Talbot's officer asks him.
"Preparing to fight."
*
A low, brutal, shuddering blast rocks the fort, sending bodies tumbling down and punching several holes in the stone, which are quickly filled with a rich, oblique light. Squad moves with the quicksilver of violence, cutting down several Night Elves who scale the wall, some climbing and others dropped by dragons or other flying creatures. A wild, hot leaping flame, he sets upon the enemy and tears them apart with magic and blade.
A Night Elf kicks Squad down a flight of stairs and, with spear poised, prepares to follow, but Sig barges into the Elf and knocks him roughly from the battlements. With an enthusiastic thumbs up, the Dwarf bellows to Squad. "Glad to help, buddy."
"Thanks, buddy," Squad replies, looking at the Dwarf's crotch. I should probably tell him his fly's open...but it gives me a feeling of secret power not to.
Squad runs up the sheer wall, leaps off and puts his sword through the face of a Night Elf sneaking up on Sig. "Thanks!" Sig smiles broadly. "Did you know an Elf's head can rotate 540 degrees...before coming off in your hands? Fun fact."
"You're insane."
"Only legally. Would you like me to shoot another arrow out of my fact quiver?"
"Only if you're aiming it at your own face."
Several Night Elf mages send destruction tearing round the fort with the frenzy of a wild animal, Squad leaping off the battlements into them. Magic explodes, charging the air with Power, as the spectre contends with half a dozen mages, the air crying and warping around them, fizzing with lightning bolts and other phenomena. As the fight is in the balance, two Elves, a female and a male, charge at the enemy mages through the storm of light, distracting them for a moment just as Anya joins Squad and they join their powers, obliterating a half dozen hostile magic-users, but not before the two brave Elves are killed.
"That was impressive combat magic," Anya tells Squad. "Do you know the two Elves who sacrificed themselves?"
"I do," says Sig, approaching them. "They were two star-crossed lovers engaged in a passionate love affair...either that or they were brother and sister – I can't remember which. I'll include both stories in their obituary, just to be safe."
Squad turns to Sig. "It just occurred to me that if I die before you, I won't get to read the biography you'll inevitably write about me: which is a shame in one way, and a bloody relief in another."
Anya gives an affectionate tap on Sig's shoulder. "This is a bigger rumpus than your disgrace in Kalnapole."
Sig sighs loudly, tired of being persecuted. "My fight or flight response kicked in – I chose to fight."
"...Which was the wrong response in a 100 metres race!"
"Oh, come on!" Sig complains. "I didn't even hit him that hard...but unfortunately, as with many axe wounds to the neck, it proved fatal."
Squad grasps Sig's shoulder supportively. "Looking back on it, man, you probably could have done things differently."
A slight exhalation escapes Sig's lips. "Maybe you're right. But let's not forget there were two murder victims that day – my sprinting career and his attachment to his head, both literally and figuratively. Let's honour them both equally."
A large section of the stone wall caves in and dragon-fire rains down on the defenders, Squad twirling his swords in anticipation. "This is it..."
"Yep," Sig agrees. "Hold on to your hats...or put them away."
*
A projectile skims shriekingly over the ground and explodes into a soldier, tearing him apart like confetti in a rain of savage, radiant blood. Squad runs along the reserve line and finds Indigo in conference with twenty of his best mages. They look up to Indigo and admire his abilities, which have made him into a leader despite his social difficulties. The sun is pouring down its rage and Indigo turns to Squad, his face flushed with heat.
"Squad, what do you need?"
"Indigo: Anya, Sig and Elizabeth Clay's forces are holding the fort, but the troops on the raised road on their flank have fallen back and the enemy is securing it. If they're left undisturbed, they'll pour down both our flanks and the whole Line will fail. We need you up there."
Indigo nods and accept this without question, showing no fear. He eyes the enemy movements on the raised road with composure and curiosity, his mages following him as he gets into position. "They seem to be coming over now," he says.
The first of the enemy cross into the field beyond the raised road but are suddenly lifted, burning and helpless. They explode, sending hungry flames into their colleagues and the screaming starts. Squad looks over at Indigo and the pulse hammering at his temple shows the Power involved. Fire gushes and flies like fast water through a narrow corridor, sweeping up the approaching enemy, an intense heat burning Squad's cheeks, the sun on top of his head feeling like a silver blade ready to drop into his brain. It seems that nothing can fight this, the ground trembling like a young horse with the explosions.
Perhaps all wars will be fought with sorcery one day and there will be no need for swords. It disturbs Squad that people will wield such power, the power to kill without seeing. Resistance starts up among the enemy mages, lightning darting ineffectually across the Samarian line, mostly blocked by Indigo's mages. Spells take life then dissolve like soft smoke.
In desperation, the enemy summon many demons and creatures, launching them at the Samarian mages. One fiery creature, eight feet tall and with claws of shining obsidian, launches itself at Indigo, who's busy preparing another Power assault. Rushing across, Squad severs an obsidian claw, which falls beautifully and uselessly to the ground while Squad presses its former owner, pushing it back with strikes to the arms and torso.
Sparks fly from its flaming body with every hit, then it dissolves into ashes with a scream, Squad looking up to see Indigo spreading his Power further and even more terribly. For a moment he seems foreign, his eyes cold and brilliant, tearing up everything they see like the eyes of a god.
A black door, for lack of a better word, appears above the field and the stars are visible through it, though it's daytime. With inhuman screeches and wails the summoned creatures are sucked through this crack in the world, though Indigo's allies remain untouched by its effects. The door quakes and shimmers, blue light flashing around it like lightning as it becomes a dark ball and suddenly reduces to a single atom, exploding without flame but with devastating force, blowing apart everything it touches and throwing out the gore and detritus of anything it had sucked in into the helpless enemies.
The enemy can't stand up to this and retreat back to the raised road, leaving behind their dead and, rising slowly from the blood-soaked fields, the timorous, melancholy sounds of pain.
"What was that?" Tal Riose's voice echoes through a sonovox at Squad's side.
Squad picks it up and speaks to the commander of the army. "Indigo and his mages launched a Power barrage against an enemy group that had reached the raised road and broken through The Line. They've thrown them back, for now."
A few moments of unscathed silence and then Tal Riose's sounds back grimly, aware of the difficulty of the order. "Take the reserve legion and win back that section of the raised road. If the enemy are allowed to stay there much longer, they'll roll along both our flanks and The Line will fail."
The reserve legion consists of over six thousand soldiers and all are likely to die if this order is carried out, including Indigo and Squad. The Night Elves' previous attack had been reckless, carried through from their attack on the raised road and with little magical protection, but all their magical might will now be heading towards this key spot won from the Samarians. Squad weighs the moment in his hands as he holds the sonovox, the decision biting at his humanity and compassion as he looks on the faces of the loyal soldiers, and into Indigo's trusting, non-military eyes. Then he speaks clearly and strongly into the sonovox.
"...Understood."
Indigo nods as he hears Squad's answer, though the spectre is bothered by the mage's only tentative question, rounded and fragile as an egg. "Do you think it's a good plan?"
"I think we can do it," Squad smiles, tapping Indigo's arm cheerfully and feeling like a traitor. "If we don't, our forces will be flanked from both sides, The Line will fail, our friends will be killed or captured, and there will be nothing stopping the enemy from sweeping up Tyria."
Indigo's eyes widen like a question, then slam tight like a statement. "There's no other way. I wish I could speak to Anya before we go, but there doesn't seem to be time." He looks out on the horizon as if he can hear his sisters' innocent cries across the years, only the slight touch of time around the unchanging eyes revealing that those days are long gone. To look at him is to peer into the warm darkness of another's soul.
Squad looks away. "No," he agrees, sadly.
"I'll prepare the magic," Indigo says.
A short while later they're advancing on the raised road, steadily because the mages have applied invisibility or chameleon spells (depending on the level of magic ability) to the soldiers around them and have to concentrate to maintain the effect. They're over halfway there, close enough to see the enemy making preparations and still haven't been spotted.
The stirring golden rust of sunset's glow dances across the rim of the raised road, Squad looking over at Indigo, as they can see each other though the enemy can't, and smiling his approval. A glimmer of effort flits across Indigo's face and it's clear he's measuring each breath to the raised road. Almost there, almost there.
They're less than a minute from the raised road when the horizon explodes and the sky rains down with fury. Spells nullified, they're visible to the enemy, brimstones the size of fists raining down on their heads. Indigo raises a barrier with one hand and flutters the other like a silk handkerchief, an explosion of blue light causing devastation ahead.
A hostile dragon-rider flies above the raised road, raining magic down on Squad's force: Salazar. The wild, inhuman music of magic soars.
They charge up the small incline leading to the raised road, into a shattering rain of crossbow bolts, devastating at this range. Squad downs three impetuous enemies and, looking around, sees that over half his force are either dead or wounded, decimated by Salazar's Power bombardment.
Indigo pulls a bolt from his arm and gazes at the wound in wonder, looking up at the raised road with new purpose in his eyes. He steps forward and, as he does so, stops short as a piece of brimstone smashes through his chest, staining his blue robes a dark red. He sways and falls, and for a second Squad thinks he catches his eye before hitting the ground.
Several soldiers rush forward with shields and the surviving mages provide a barrier, Squad rushing into the shadow of this swaying, tottering construct and putting Indigo's head on his knees. His mouth is raised in an unconscious snarl of pain and there's no breath in him, Squad's head filling with clamouring grief, responsibility warring with a desire for vengeance as he looks up at the struggling shield wall.
He grabs Indigo's wrist and feels his pulse racing like a small animal's. Alive, but barely, Squad wonders if the mage's physically frail body (magically powerful, but over six feet and weighing only 140 pounds) can survive the devastating hole punched through his chest. Hauling Indigo over one shoulder, Squad calls out an order.
"Forward! To the raised road!"
There's only a handful of metres to charge but Squad notices that Salazar has disappeared, drawn away or engaged by some other force. Holding onto Indigo, he leaps over the precipice of the raised road and, sword poised, lands amidst the enemy.
*
The sun shines through the waterfall's pristine perfection, its droplets becoming a cascade of colour as they descend through a haze of light to blue water sleeping in the arms of the bay. All the perfection of nature is contained in this vast valley and can be seen from the huge panoramic window, forty feet high and sixty across, of the mansion perched on top of a hillside overlooking the vista. This is Auchenmuir, sanctuary of the Samarian emperor Brigham Clay.
"What's the result of our operations?" Brigham Clay asks Gaal Godbolt, his advisor, who's walking beside the emperor's wheelchair.
They stop and Godbolt hands the emperor a summary folder. "We're pretty sure SAIMR is connected to these," he points towards the ceiling, indicating the sky and space above, "entities. We don't know the exact relationship between SAIMR and the aliens yet, but a patterns exist to evidence the connection. The Iron Legion, special forces and the spectre service have launched several successful operations against SAIMR resources."
"We must have pissed them off royally," the emperor assesses, causing Godbolt to smile.
"That's the present assumption."
"Good work, Gaal," Brigham Clay speaks warmly. "And the Battle of The Line—my daughter?"
Godbolt shutters his expression with a shake of his head. "Too early to say. They're holding, for now."
"That's all we can ask," the emperor mutters stoically. "It's a tiny, dark, desperate hope—but it's there."
"Every step is an act of courage; every death is a dream devoured," Godbolt agrees. "We can only hope that the heroism on display across The Line is enough to stand against these bleak times."
Brigham Clay nods and takes Gaal Godbolt's hand, decades of friendship standing at their side. "I want you to go to the capital and monitor things from there. No protests," he quickly adds, anticipating Godbolt's desire to stay. "I know you'll look after everything there until my return."
"Yes, sir," Godbolt replies, heading off down the corridor.
"Where to, sir?" asks the bodyguard pushing Brigham Clay's wheelchair.
"To the window, I think. I should like to look across the water."
While being pushed towards the window, a figure appears from nowhere between Brigham Clay and the panoramic window, the blue porous sky hanging like a setting for its tall body. He recognises the intruder—Gelson Musk, enigmatic businessman and owner of Paradigm, the largest private company in the world.
Framed by the brilliant and opulent window, Musk looks down at the emperor, a buried smile of disdain unearthed on his face, which is only intensified by the ring of weapons drawn as the emperor's bodyguards crowd protectively around their charge. Musk's polite tone rings and tinkles like a teaspoon in a glass.
"Hello, emperor."
"What are you doing here, Musk?"
Their eloquent looks duel one another, then Musk speaks. "I hear you've been hitting out at our planetary forces."
At the mention of planetary forces, Brigham Clay shifts uneasily, though no fear shows in his eyes when he speaks. His tone is strong, even, defiant. "I always knew you were a shadowy little shit."
Musk laughs silently, though in each eye a missile of wrath lies hidden. "You don't even know what you're fighting for. You think you're fighting for your planet, or freedom, or some other cause that you understand, but you're not. People think The Spider works for the Samarian government, but you and I know that isn't true: The Spider has never interfered with anything you've done, never set any ultimatums, never taken a decision, yet had guided Samarian life for six-hundred years."
"And what is the truth?" Brigham Clay asks, not knowing if he really wants an answer. "Who is The Spider?"
Calmly, Gelson Musk approaches the emperor, Brigham Clay holding up a hand to stop his bodyguards from taking action as the interloper bends down and whispers in his ear, a ferocious fragility entering the emperor's eyes as he learns the truth: there's shock there and a damp horror that could drive a man insane or make a spectre betray his country.
Stepping back the way he came, Musk stops at his previous position. "That's impossible," Brigham Clay mutters to himself, then recovers his poise. "But it doesn't matter: nothing can stop the native and naked dignity of people. It lives on, regardless of set-back or circumstance."
A broad grin evolves from Musk's face. "I need you to give The Spider a message."
"What message?" Brigham Clay enquires.
"Only this," Musk replies, his Cheshire cat smile disappearing along with the rest of him and leaving only a panoramic view of the window, where a curved agitation of light is seen floating over the falls directly outside, gradually resolving itself into an immense black triangle.
The emperor's bodyguard gasps. "Has he been taken aboard the ship?"
Brigham Clay's eyes widen into immense globes of realisation. "He is the ship." His face, which has suffered and stifled great passions, softens as memory bursts its banks in a flood of feeling: a youth spent fighting against his disability but gradually losing the ability to walk, only to discover that in some ways it made him stronger; holding his daughter in his hands for the first time and being afire with intense emotion; looking in the mirror, pinned by time's grey spider, and realising that the tree of his youth, sturdy, strong, a thousand rootlets grasping deep into the terrain, was coming loose and failing. All of this occurs to him as he watches a light generate at the ship's pointed edge.
He turns to his bodyguard gently. "Thank you, captain."
"It's been an honour, sir," says the bodyguard, saluting.
Light fills the horizon like a thread of fire and pulses forward.
Onboard a kelpie in the distance, Gaal Godbolt looks down as the Auchenmuir estate lights up the horizon in a mountain of flame and slides into the vast bay like a waterfall of earth, stone and human life.
***
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