Minutes went by. Precious minutes that brought the forces of evil closer to this city. Finally, the man ran back. Behind him, walking as though his world were not on verge of falling apart, was the Mayor. His ridiculous long shirt in all its loud colors was still buttoned from the neck all the way down.
The two witches he had with him last time also approached, one carrying an oversized battle axe, the other wielding a long wooden staff. They must be his body guard.
“You are handsome, but stupid,” the Mayor said. The blue-clad witch whispered something to the one dressed in red.
“A war approaches, Mayor,” I said. “Ready your army.”
“We have no army,” the Mayor said. “We have a well-trained, though small, corps of city guards that keep the peace. They are more than well enough prepared for whatever rogues come our way.”
“These aren’t rogues,” I said. “It’s Duul.”
“We should have accepted imperial protection,” the blue-clad mage said.
“Agreed,” the red one said.
“What would that mean?” I asked. “Is it too late?”
“Lily is wrong,” the Mayor said. “We don’t need the empire, its taxes, or its laws. We can protect ourselves.”
The faint sound of the approaching army reached our ears. Each of their faces sobered at the sound. This had suddenly become real to them.
“If you relax the law against it,” I said, “I can improve your skills and attributes now, in advance of the war.”
“You will do no such thing,” the Mayor said.
“We should consider it,” Lily said. She took her blue hat off, releasing a long, flowing head of brown hair behind her.
“You will stop speaking out of turn,” the Mayor said. “You lack the foresight of a lawmaker.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
A guard approached. “Mayor,” he said. “We spied two dozen people on their way toward the city. Shall we meet them outside the front gates?”
“No,” the Mayor said. “Assemble the guards here. If they make it through the front gate, then we will fight. I expect they’ll realize how powerful our lightning tower is and turn heel.”
I stood, uncomfortably, while the army marched toward our door. The Mayor did nothing more to warn the citizens or protect the city, he just folded his hands in front of him and stood there.
“Ambry,” Lily said to the mage in red robes, “are you ready?”
“Full power,” she said.
“Good,” Lily said. “No one messes with my city and lives.”
The ball of electric light that hovered atop Valleyvale’s magic defense tower crackled and throbbed. It grew as the threat got closer, until finally it sent a long, snaking arc of energy that filled the air with the smell of ozone.
Something in the forest outside Valleyvale screeched. It was the only cretin that would be taken unaware. The second its body hit the ground, metal crashed against metal and throaty roars erupted into the air. They rushed the doors.
The tower recharged slowly, building its throbbing energy mass from a nascent spark to a giant crackling ball over the course of thirty or so seconds. The archers in the other guard tower shot quickly at the oncoming attackers.
We just stood there, waiting. The Mayor, armed only with arrogance; Lily, whose fists were frosty with some ice spell she was preparing; Ambry, whose eyes burned with magic fire; and me, with my spear at the ready. A dozen guards with swords and shields formed a loose wall between us and the city gates.
The wooden gates to the city, dense and expertly adorned with ornamental carvings, stood up to the assault longer than I expected. Still, the cretins hacked away at them, ignoring the damage from arrows and electric bolts that whittled down their numbers.
A black blade crunched through the gates. A cretin’s shining black boot stomped through the splintered wood, opening the first entry point for Duul’s forces.
The guards sprang into action, thrusting swords at the creatures as they climbed into the city. Other cretins hacked away at the doors from the outside, widening their entry.
“Girls?” the Mayor said.
“About time,” Ambry replied. She reached forward and conjured a wall of fire that enclosed the guards and the cretins, keeping them at the city’s front in a small, sweltering area. A lightning bolt sizzled toward a cretin, striking it dead in a single blow as it climbed through the jagged aperture in the large wooden door.
Lily’s hands continued to frost, though she didn’t take action yet.
The archers had stopped shooting at the army below. Cretins had climbed the archers’ tower and were engaged in hand to hand combat, something the archers were likely ill equipped for. There was nothing on the face of the tower to stop the cretins from scurrying up the rocks like demented squirrels.
The creatures that lunged at the archers on the tower’s tiny roof were not the man-shaped cretins that wielded swords down below. These creatures were canine in form, with rippling black muscle shining across their backs like they were carved from obsidian.
These war dogs had shut down one of the city’s defenses, the cretins had torn down the doors, and now other cretins had erected some kind of magic barrier that interfered with the electric tower. The rest of this battle would take place here, on the cobblestone square that welcomed visitors across the threshold of Valleyvale’s entrance.
Two guards were down, maybe more. It was hard to see through Ambry’s fire wall. A dozen cretins had climbed into the city now, with more on their way.
“You have to let me in there,” I said. I had a good weapon, and a combat skill. I could help keep the cretins from tearing out the guards’ throats.
“In time,” the Mayor said. “Let the guards prove their worth.”
“But the cretins are conjuring their black magic smog,” I said. “They’ll turn the guards against us if we don’t act soon.”
“Running out,” Ambry said. The flames of her wall began to diminish until the entire thing snuffed out.
“My turn!” Lily said. She began pumping her hands through the air, throwing snowballs that came out of nowhere. Each one landed on a cretin, turning the creatures into veritable ice sculptures. They were frozen solid, at least for the time being.
A few of the guards stepped back from the fray, still clutching their weapons. They looked back at us, then the cretins. Then they charged at the Mayor.
Ambry stepped forward with her staff to block their attacks. “Traitors!”
“It’s the cretins’ doing,” I said. I stepped forward with my spear, while Lily readied a long metal axe. “Don’t kill the guards, it’s not their fault.”
“They should have resisted this curse!” the Mayor said.
A cursed guard lunged toward me, but I activated Piercing Blow and stabbed his shield. The force of it threw him back, but my weapon had speared through his shield like a shish kabob. It was nice to know Razortooth was that sharp, but having a shield stuck to my spear made the weapon heavy and unwieldy.
I whipped my spear in a wide arc, using the attached shield to knock down the rest of the guards that had come for us. The inertia took me with it, dragging me to the ground as my legs failed to spin fast enough to keep up.
“First fight?” Ambry asked. She clobbered a fallen guard in the head with her staff, knocking him unconscious.
“Me?” I asked. “No, I’ve been fighting my whole life.” My main opponents until recently had been bats, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
Lily continued to freeze cursed guards and cretins in place, but there were more cretins than she could keep up with. Some of them rushed at me, so I braced for their attacks. Either I’d catch their sword arms with my bare hands and stop their attacks, or I’d lose some of my precious HP in the form of stab wounds. I really didn’t want to pass out from lack of HP, because then I’d be very easy to kill, but for the time being I was unarmed.