Chapter 104 - Cheering From The Walls

  It was time to assemble the allied armies and march on the mall. I had a full set of Animated undead, and while my Control Undead wasn’t maxed out, that could be easily solved by taking over a portion of the enemy force and using their own troops against them. On top of that, Patches was in charge of sixty ratkin warriors! Most of them were only tier two, but it was still a sizable fighting force.

  I still hoped Turner would be willing to lend aid as well. He’d seemed open to the idea when we spoke, provided he got the control stone. If he sent enough troops to make it worthwhile, I had no issues with that. I already had two, myself, and it didn’t seem like it was all that big a deal. If he committed enough forces to help us win the day, then it would be worth it.

  Patches assembled his force and we set off through the woods toward the east. We made excellent time; the ratkin were great at moving quickly and seemed tireless. It wasn’t even lunchtime when we exited the forest at the interstate. I turned us north there, following the road until we hit a huge open field to the right side, full of solar panels. The panels themselves were useless now, but according to the map, the tip of the airport runways were just on the other side.

  We pressed on into the field, but the spaces between the panels themselves were too small for Sue, so we skirted them. I was glad we did, because I caught glimpses of movement underneath. Something was living in the shadowed spaces over there. It looked like we were considered too big a force to face directly, but I was willing to bet if we’d actually entered their home, they’d have attacked anyway.

  Just another reminder of how dangerous the world was, these days.

  Like I needed one! Each day that went by was more of the same: combat, violence, death, and an ongoing fight to survive. In spite of it all, I found myself thriving. Never would have seen that coming, but there it was.

  “Trouble ahead,” Patches called up to me. I was riding Sue again, which gave me elevation to see potential dangers, but Patches had a few of his ratkin scouting the way ahead, to give us better early warnings.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Birds fighting ahead. Lots of birds. They attack humans.”

  Oh, crap. Today of all days, the avians decided to go on the rampage? “How many?”

  Patches shook his head. “Too many paws to count.”

  Not great. I needed to get in there. The avians and Guard seemed pretty evenly matched. If they were striking in force, it was because they thought they had a chance of winning, and after the ratkin, the Guard were my closest allies. I couldn’t let them fall.

  “Patches, I’m going to ride ahead with Sue and see if I can help. The dinosaur’s Fireballs are powerful, and the avians seem afraid of Sue. We might be able to get them to withdraw,” I told him. “I’m having my other undead follow as fast as they can. Stick with them—they’ll protect you if you’re attacked. We need to nip this battle in the bud.”

  “We do,” Patches replied. “Go!”

  I didn’t need more encouragement. I passed mental orders to my undead, telling them to follow me at top speed and defend the ratkin with their ‘lives.’ Then I turned back to Sue. “Let’s go. Full rush.”

  Sue let out a roar and bounded forward at a rush.

  It was always wild, riding my T.rex at top speed. Sue sped up fast, picking up steam like an undead sports car. Well, maybe not quite that much! I guess we were doing twenty, maybe twenty-five miles an hour. Fast enough to feel damned impressive when you were riding a dinosaur at that pace.

  We burst through a patch of trees at the edge of the runway area and found ourselves out in a massive open space. Ahead were the airport runway and taxiways, the space around them full of overgrown grass. With no mowers, it was starting to grow quickly. Burlington International Airport only had one major runway, but there were two long taxiways running parallel to it, one on either side. The northeast one was for the Guard jets. The southwest one was for civilian craft. Pre-Event, the airport and Guard base shared the single runway.

  Now, the runway was the line marking the barrier between the Guard and the new residents of the airport—the avians. From what Farnsworth told me, the avians usually didn’t cross the barrier, and neither did the Guard. They each kept to their own side, maybe raiding the other occasionally.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  No longer. Now, it looked like every avian warrior they had was in the air, diving toward the walls around the Guard base. One tower was fully engulfed in flames, and the main gate was under heavy attack. There were at least a hundred avians in the air. I could understand why the ratkin scouts couldn’t get a good count. Numbers that high were tough for anyone, and they moved around so fast even I couldn’t get a good count.

  “Sue, get their attention,” I said, shouting over the wind as we rushed toward our foes. I regretted losing my shield to the ants—I needed a new one as soon as possible. The avians had a lot of long range weapons, and without a shield I didn’t have a lot of defense against arrows or spears.

  Sue roared, the echoes of the sound rebounding off the concrete walls of the base and the wood line around the perimeter of the airfield. The roar was loud enough it actually stopped the fighting, if only for a moment! The avians all but froze in mid-air, and a few actually tumbled in the air, falling a dozen feet before recovering enough to catch themselves.

  From the Guard base, the sound of screaming reached my ears, and I winced at first, thinking the avians must be in there attacking the relatively weak civilians. Turner was focusing combat-related crystals on his combat troops. It made sense—it was the only way he could quickly get a sizable, effective army running. But it left the rest of his people low on crystals, and vulnerable.

  I realized that it wasn’t screaming almost immediately. They were…cheering?

  Sue roared a second time as we got nearer to the base, and now I was close enough to see soldiers on the walls, shouting and cheering for us as we rode up. I grinned. It was nice to be the cavalry everyone was rooting for! I could get used to this feeling.

  A wing of avians broke off from their assault and turned to face us as we approached. A glance over my shoulder told me the rest of my force was also on the airfield area and headed this way fast, but the avians were going to reach me before my allies did. That was okay—there were a lot of them, but this batch clearly hadn’t seen Sue in action before, because they were far more bunched up than was safe.

  “Hit them right…there,” I told Sue, pointing.

  The dinosaur spat a Fireball spell precisely where I’d aimed. The spell smacked one avian in the chest, exploding and engulfing the two next to him in fire as well. The one hit directly was dead, and plummeted to the ground like a stone. The two nearby were on fire as well, though, their plumage burning as they struggled to stay aloft. Four avians moved to assist, two helping each injured bird-man in a move that looked well-rehearsed, easing them out of the sky. They landed enough to the southwest that I felt that group was no longer going to be a threat.

  One Fireball effectively took out seven enemies. One dead, two wounded, and four more carrying off the injured. The remainder of their force was only another dozen avians, and they looked a whole lot less happy about attacking Sue now.

  I cast Contagion on the nearest, but they were spreading out as quick as they could, so it wasn’t spreading easily to the others. I swore under my breath, then dropped a Drain Life on one which got near enough to hit. The black flames slammed into it, burning up its life force and then delivering it back to me. The avian dropped from the sky, dead before it hit the ground.

  More blasts of flame sprang into the air from around me, and I realized the rest of my force had caught up. The fire skeletons weren’t as effective as Sue’s Fireballs, but they could still hit hard. About half of the ratkin were armed with makeshift bows and arrows, too, and they filled the air with a hail of wooden shafts, far too many for the avians to avoid. The entire attacking force died in seconds.

  That was too much for the rest of them. A horn sounded from over at the civilian airport side of the runway, loud enough to echo across the entire area. It was a signal; all of the avians turned immediately from whatever they were doing and raced back southwest, leaving the battlefield behind. The Guardsmen kept shooting, taking down a few more as they fled, but I ordered my unit to stand down, and asked Patches to have his people do the same.

  I understood why the avians and Guard were at arms with each other. Turner activating his control stone probably meant the avians couldn’t do the same. They were intelligent, organized, and had a permanent base of operations with a large population. In short, they seemed to have all of the prerequisites for getting handed a control stone. My guess was, they had one. But so long as Turner’s Domain was active so close, they couldn’t use it.

  That said, the avians were smart and had already proved to me they were capable of being reasoned with. When I’d returned their baby to them, they could have attacked me again, as soon as it was safe. They’d have been stupid to do so; Sue was a brutal countermeasure for anything flying. The accuracy with which Sue could land those Fireballs was insane. But they could have come after us as soon as the baby was safe.

  They hadn’t. That meant it was possible to work out a peaceful arrangement with them, and I wanted to leave that door as open as possible. Didn’t mean I was willing to let them take down the Guard, obviously. But if I could find a way to get humans and avians to co-exist, that would be best.

  That would be for another day, though. Today, the mall threat was paramount. If we didn’t find a way to put an end to whatever lurked in there soon, we’d be hard pressed to do so at all. That meant kicking the avians off Turner’s doorstep, and hoping he felt grateful enough to send a large fighting force along with me. I rode toward their main gate, keeping my fingers crossed that this avian attack wouldn’t make Turner too nervous to keep up his end of the bargain we’d made.