novelzi Chapter 582 – Not One Shot Wasted
Chapter 582 – Not One Shot Wasted
Kassandora stood besides Kavaa in the very centre of Levhen’s roads. From here, they could see the Eastern, the Western and the Northern Gate. The army within the Hold had settled down into the hum of normalcy for the past week. That normalcy had been ripped away an hour ago when metal began to shriek and wail with the cries of a sobbing banshee. Now, the entire hold stared towards the Eastern Gate in shocked silence. The idle chatter of dreams and hopes between the soldiers, their off-colour jokes and tales of grand victories in battle, in drink, in women, had ceased.A silence so crushingly present that Kassandora could feel it try to press down on her shoulders as if the entire landmass above them was beginning to cave in. By Kassandora’s side, Kavaa stood in silence. The time for moping and for tears had passed. Both Goddesses had been in the Great War, both Goddesses knew exactly what it meant to stand in battle. Flat expressions overtook the two of them, a pair of grey eyes and a pair of red, framed by hair of the same colours and topped off by black caps, stared at the massive crease in the Eastern Gate. “So here it is.” Kavaa said, her tone cold and sturdy.
“So here it is.” Kassandora replied. Fitting words. She found her lips curling upwards at them. Kavaa took a deep breath, her shoulders rolling along with her body to it.
“Until Suns shine again.” Kavaa said. Above the two Goddesses, one of Levhen’s massive suns stood hung embedded from the ceiling above them. An orb of countless runes that had laid cold and silent for a thousand years.
“However long it takes.” Kassandora replied. “Until the Suns shine again.” She repeated. There was nothing else to add. They would stand and hold or they would stand and die. She had been in this situation before, no matter how many times she tried to avoid it. Kavaa had been in it on almost daily basis during the Great War. The only reason she was still here was because Leona had managed to make sure that the Goddess of Health would always avoid any of Kassandora’s sisters.
Once again the ram smashed forwards. Finally the beams that had been installed to support the gate buckled. They did not break or shatter, they dug deeper into the stone as a faint crack of light emerged from between the doors. The glow of orange and red flame that Tartarus would use to make the temperature warm enough for their own kind. “I love you.” Kavaa repeated again.
“Mmh.” Kassandora said. “Until it’s over, I’ll be by your side.” That was the most she could say at this time. It was childish, Kassandora knew it was. She shoved the thought into the back of her mind and took a deep breath at the triumph. So she could still do it. It had to be in real battle true, but it could still be done. So Kavaa had not dulled her mind.
“Thank you.”
“No.” Kassandora said. “Thank you.” She repeated. “Because I would not be stood here right now if it wasn’t it for you.”
Kavaa chuckled. The ram hit again. The light from outside grew thicker. Flames began to whisk through it as if they were dogs. Tartarus would not be able to dislodge those massive chunks of metal from the outside. They would have to push them from the outside. The supports dug further in. Behind them, the floor was smattered with automatons that had been scattered about to prevent any charges. Behind that was the first line of defenders: the dwarven animated skeletons in a tight formation. They lowered their pikes and spears and brought the shields up to interlink with each other. Then the humans and dwarves. The vehicles. Clerics. Magicians were preparing, their wands and rings and staffs beginning to glow as they caught onto to magic. “I don’t believe that.” Kavaa said.
“I would still be stood here.” Kassandora said. “But it would not be the me that is stood here right now.”
“That is the most precious thing I have ever heard from you.”
Kassandora smiled at the compliment. “Then I am I could offer it.” Neither Goddess moved closer to each other, they didn’t even bother glancing to the side. Eyes were fixed straight ahead. Kassandora wished she could be this open in times of peace.
The slam came again. The flames from that gap got larger. Kassandora finally saw movement on the other side. Just some demon flying from behind one gate to the other. They were singing their cursed little sieging song, that was the rhythm setter. Kassandora had seen this play out from the outside in the past. It was a low melody, the sort that would be heard in factories. Malam had once translated the words, it wasn’t a cheerful soldier’s song that talked of imminent death but some rancid tune about glory instead.
That had always left a bad taste in Kassandora’s mouth.
The next slam came and Kassandora called upon her Orchestra. The grand piano of the director began to sound in her mind. Kavaa joined first, almost immediately once the bell that began it had sounded in everyone’s heads. This time, she was a grand set of pipe organs that slowly bellowed from the back and matched Kassandora’s piano beat by beat. Kassandora took one deep breath. What a terrible woman she was, she could hear the longing in those high-pitched whines of the organ. To think that Kavaa hadn’t just said it already.
Kassandora grabbed Kavaa’s hand and felt the Goddess of Health’s finger immediately wrap around her palm. That was the entire movement, nothing needed to be said. Kassandora could hear the organ and Kavaa could hear the piano. And the Orchestra expanded. The magicians brought in their ever-bombastic percussion that wanted to scream over everything else. Kassandora dulled them into the background, there was no point expending their energies yet. The hundreds shining gems watching the entrance suddenly went out. Brass and winds and strings joined, each man another adding set of notes that quietly listened to the piano and kept the tune.
And just as Kassandora played with them, she played through them. Levhen fell so silent it could have been dead, only the sound of faintly rumbling engines and generators that provided power to the spotlights pointed at the gates remained. Yet inside everyone’s mind, they heard that rising tune that kept their fingers on the trigger and their eyes ahead. Men shuffled around into more comfortable positions, the last of Kassandora’s tiny adjustments. Snipers moved from windows. A few men moved before the armoured vehicles, there was no risk of friendly crushing when Kassandora when they fell in line to the tune.
For as they fell in line to the tune, Kassandora fell in line with them. She saw through their eyes. The gate suddenly could be spotted through a thousand angles. The spear wall at the start, in a V-shape with the centre closest to the gate to force as many demons off the bridge as possible could be seen through the eyes of men higher up. They held their breathes. Kavaa’s Clerics joined the choir, their harps cold. Immediately they got to moving. Not the healing of wounds, but the healing of fatigue that the soldiers did not know they had. Kavaa just stood and stared. Her power was too much to great to waste this early.
Once again, that ram smashed into the gate. And once again, the doors moved. They were battering the wall apart, not down. The crease in the middle of the metal grew by another inch. This would be the kill zone. If Tartarus was charge through, it would be open season on the humans. Even ancient legionnaires, trained to fight in melee, would struggle against demons ever just slightly taller and slightly stronger. In their armour, then there was no way to touch them.
Men deeper in the hold, behold to the Orchestra, began to walk around through corridors that had been explored yet were unlit. Kassandora had her general strategy of retreating deeper in but there was no scouting or report-giving that could give the same confidence as War’s music. Dwarven runemasters masters cut apart their little bags of metal shards they could speak to in unison, each one making the exact same motion as they grabbed a fistful and held it close to them.
All beholden to the music. All within the Orchestra. None without it.
Kassandora raised her hand into the air. The firm weight of Joyeuse materialized within it. War’s Greatsword, the blade whose mere shadow would make armies break and flee. Not today though. The tearing of stone drowned out the Orchestra the two impossibly large doors that made up the gate shifted once again. Fire leapt from the gap between and ash and soot. A small demon, unarmoured and holding only a shortsword in his hand squeezed through the gap. He turned, closed his eyes against the blinding spotlamps, he raised the blade and he charged forwards another monster behind him immediately tried to step through. Through the eyes of men above, Kassandora recalibrated the barrels.
Kassandora swung her conductor’s baton down. Joyeuse no sound as it softly fell through the air, but inside, Kassandora’s piano slammed down all its keys. A single bullet sounded from a soldier who was nothing more but the tiny string on a harp. Guided by Kassandora, the bullet crashed directly into the demon’s head. One tank fired a single shell of high-explosive through the gap, directly into the battering ram.
Not one shot wasted.
The ram slammed down again. Kassandora watched through the eyes of a man as the soldier next to him pulled back a lever and ejected the shell. Through that man’s eyes, she saw another shell be slid up into the barrel. It was not her own hand that pushed the lever back, but she saw the inside of that cabin as she saw the inside of every cabin that had men inside.
Outside, there was a roar. Their little chant had died under the fury of being hit past the gates. Inside, the Orchestra got louder as Kassandora watched through the eyes of a man who held his finger on the trigger of a cannon.
The ram battering slammed into Levhen’s eastern gate once again as demons began to pour through.
Not one shot wasted.