“Uhh, Captain? Got a lot of contacts within the perimeter.”
“Captain? Something in the tunnels! I can hear them coming!”
“Orders? Monsters on the approach!”
“They’re in the walls! They’re in the walls!”
Yasmine’s eyes widened in horror, unmoving at what was unfolding before her. This many contacts? So close together? Is this a wave?
“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” Wallace roared. “PREPARE TO FALL BACK TO THE CITY!”
“What!”
“Confirm? Captain, confirm!”
“GET YOUR ARSES BACK TO THE CITY!” Wallace turned to bellow directly to the wall. “AND SOMEBODY CONFIRM A DAMN VISUAL!”
“I don’t see anything, Captain!”
“Yasmine! Yasmine? Yas?” The captain turned to his second in command to find her staring in a daze at the projection.
He shoved her roughly in the arm until she turned to look at him, her eyes vacant.
“Focus, idiot! Get those damn soldiers back to the gates and then lock them! You hear me? Get to it!”
He turned her around and pushed her toward the audio arrays before he spun back to the projection. There were hundreds of small glowing points of red light now, and more appeared every second in every direction, all moving toward the city.
“What the hell are you?” he muttered. “What could you possibly be?”
The guards manning the outer defences fell back, abandoning their posts and equipment as they sprinted to safety. One by one, the guard stations went silent until the monsters approached. That’s when Wallace heard it.
“Click, click, click…”
“Click, click, click, click, click, click, click…”
“Click, click, click, click- click-click-click-click-click-click-click-CLICK-CLICK.”
From every array the same sound rattled out a thousand times over a few seconds. It wasn’t the sound of a foot, or a boot, but something harder and sharper, stabbing against the stone as it gripped. Wallace only had to think for a second to determine what kind of monster it could be.
That’s when he knew they were dead.
34. Attack on Rylleh, Part 2
The captain of the Rylleh guard knew, deep in his gut, that he was dead, that everyone around him was dead. He felt as if his blood had slowed to a crawl in his veins as he stared at the projection, more red lights blooming to life each second. There were thousands of them, because of course there were.
In that moment, he felt as if two divergent paths lay before him. He could surrender to the inevitable death that awaited him and every person living in the city, lay down and give in, or he could fight and take as many of the filthy monsters down with him as he could.
It didn’t seem like much of a choice at all to Wallace.
“Yasmine! YAS! Get over here!”
His second in command, a quaver of panic running just beneath the surface, rushed back to his side, and he stepped in front of the display before he turned to speak to her.
“What’s been happening?” he asked.
He could hear the rumbling and clatter of more guardsmen piling into the headquarters, responding to the emergency summons that was automatically sent out once the alarms were tripped.
“W-Well,” Yasmine steadied herself. “I’ve done as you asked. All of the outer guardsmen are retreating to the gates, which are being closed and reinforced. The reserves have been summoned and the city has been notified of an attack.”
“Right, I want everyone to abandon the gates and fall back to the city centre,” Wallace said. “Issue an evacuation order to the populace. Everyone into the city centre, collapse the buildings in a hundred metre radius beyond the square. Then I want—”
“Have you gone mad?” Yasmine demanded, aghast. “Are you abandoning the city? You’ll kill us all!”
“They’re tunnelling through the rock! The walls are useless, they’re just going to go around them. They’re tunnelling up from underneath us as we speak!”
“That’s impossible! What about the enchantments? The reinforced rock? It’s absurdly hard to break through the stone!”
“It would be if they were human,” he ground out. “But they bloody well aren’t. Now listen close and keep your bloody mouth shut, alright?”
He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, his old, calloused hand digging painfully into her flesh. She looked at him and noticed for the first time the faint glint of something mad in his eyes, something other.
“Are you alright, Captain?” she whispered.
“I will be soon,” he chuckled. “Now shut up and listen. I’m going to tell you something and it’s very important you don’t spread this around. The last thing we want is a panic, alright? Do you understand?”
“I-I think so, Captain.”
“Good. We are under attack by ants. This is an ant horde.”
He muttered the words low, forcing her to lean closer to hear him. He could see the moment she comprehended him as her face drained of blood and she began to shake. He gripped her tighter and tried to give her the strength to hold on.
“There’s thousands of them, alright? Thousands. Not a single one below tier three. I know, shut up.” He held her eyes as she tried to break in but he refused to allow her to panic. “The gates are going to be useless, they’ll tunnel around and come at our people from behind. The only way we have a chance is if we gather in the square and use those walls to hold them off. Alright? Breathe, Yas. Just breathe. We can make it, but we have to act fast! I need you to hold it together and help get the orders out, otherwise we’re finished.”
Used to dealing with bar scuffles and the rare monster wave, she wasn’t equipped to handle this, but she gathered her courage and nodded. She would do her best for the city of her birth. They wouldn’t die today!
Seeing the firming determination in her eyes, Wallace released her to her duty. He’d had to lie to her, to keep her steady. Even when they gathered in the square, the ants would tunnel under the walls and come at them from beneath, but hopefully they’d be able to swat a few of the filthy bugs as they approached. It was the best they could hope for.
Not even aware of the smile that twisted his face, Wallace rushed out to give his orders.
Not far away.
“They want us to WHAT?”
“Abandon the gate! Orders came straight from Wallace!”
“Like hell we are!” Ernes yelled back through the communication crystal. “Has that old fool turned traitor?”
The voice on the other side of the enchanted gem grew frustrated at his intransigence.
“If you think the captain has betrayed the city, you’re drunk. Get your men to the square and follow orders! This is an attack, not a Sunday dance!”
Ernes Bally slammed his fist onto the expensive array, cracking it right down the middle. He’d be damned if he was going to abandon his post during an invasion, regardless of what his orders were! When it was all said and done, he’d be commended for holding his ground whilst Wallace was dragged through the mud for his cowardice.
“What are our orders, Ernes?” one of his men called.
“We hold the line. Whoever is stupid enough to take this city is going to get a taste of our steel!”
Confidence surging, he rushed out of the guard house attached to the west gate and helped to finish closing and sealing it. A massive construction of enchanted metal and stone, the gates had held off hordes of monsters during the recent wave, and Ernes doubted there was any chance they would fail now.