Born a Monster

Due to my low level of health, I had to sit out the first assault on the walls near Rice Gate for the summer. It was horrible.

Not that it was any more horrible than fighting Xinyi Shi, mind you. But just SITTING THERE, seeing nothing, doing nothing.

“All champions not on roof duty support the walls!” Captain Feng commanded. It was a risky gamble from one perspective. The roof of the gate was defended by two champions. Two.

On the other hand, how many troops wanted to assault the very point where their hero, Xinyi Shi, had died? Well, their local hero, at least.

The siege engines hurled large stones back and forth, as their troops charged forward, doing what they could to protect themselves from our archers. They emplaced ladders, most of which were broken, shoved away, or otherwise neutralized.

It was a lot of sound and fury, and almost none of them reached the top of the wall. It was just... senseless.

And then, with a loud rumble, things changed. At first, it was just another noise, and our troops began evacuating the area where it had originated from.

Why? But I didn’t need to wonder long.

.....

Cracks formed along the lower edge of the wall, pieces falling off and below the surface of the earth.

For a time, that made less sense. The bedrock of the island was strong, especially under the walls themselves. It would take...

“Elementals.” I said. “Spirits of the earth, employed to dig holes underneath our walls.”

“Our anti-sapper wards should have prevented that.” Captain Feng said. “But look, the ground reserves are already moving to hold the gap.”

The wall hadn’t entirely collapsed; the stonework was more resilient than that. But a roughly triangular section had fallen into the hole.

Whatever the attackers had been hoping to achieve, they had defeated themselves. Enough stone had fallen down to suppress any underground forces, and enough remained that the hole had become a pit, deep enough that ladders were needed at both ends, to climb in and climb back out.

To get archers close enough to fire through the gap required they subject themselves to archery attacks from atop the wall.

But their own desire for glory prevented the attackers from making full use of the breach. The soldiers clustered, making tempting targets for our archers. It was clear they had been expecting a larger breach, perhaps an entire section of the wall to be gone.

It took them hours to realize that it was already a gauntlet of death, to call off their troops, leaving mounds of their dead higher than most men.

“This has to be the worst attack upon a fortified wall I’ve ever seen.” I said, observing the carnage from atop the wall.

“Oh, it’s bigger than you can see in the torchlight. Must be hundreds of them dead.”

Oh, I could see them, in spite of the night, and the half-moon seeming to hide behind every available cloud. “I can’t count all of them, but I’d estimate around four hundred or so.”

Turns out from the morning statistics that there were roughly two hundred thirty dead, but an equal number of defeated soldiers in various levels of negative health. Surprising is that more than a hundred were taken prisoner, either pinned by the dead and dying, or with some manner of severe injury that kept them on the battlefield.

“We have our casualties, too.” Kang Shi told me. “And then there are the soldiers with new mental or emotional disorders. I’ve heard talk that the support units want to send the critically injured north to the middle section, and that the general is taking his time to approve that.”

“A movement of that magnitude is bound to allow the Nine access to the central zone.” I said.

“Access which they don’t already have?” she asked. “Command needs to make up its mind. Either the Nine are just a side conflict, or there are a LOT more resources that need to be called up to bring them to heel.”

“And might I guess that the latter is your viewpoint?” I asked.

She glared. “I am concerned that the logistics branch has been compromised. They provide us our food, our water, our supplies. Empress curse us all for fools if we ignore that threat. I mean, the whole reason we’re on half rations is to last long enough for the harvest to be taken in at its normal times. I’ll be the first to admit that the sheer scale of this makes it not a normal siege, but if we can just keep the crops going, we have enough food, and some decent amount of surplus.”

“Our walls are not entirely untouchable.” I said.

“Oh, I’m certain that the big helmets at the main gate already have a fix available for that.”

Captain Feng emerged from his office. “Little Monitor, I understand you have at least a novice’s attunement to the earth element?”

“I do, sir.”

“Report to the breach at once. Sometime today, Du Jing will be arriving to take charge of the counter-earth magic. Until your health is at combat levels, you are her mystic apprentice.”

There were a few grumbles; having me as their kitchen-slave had slightly improved morale.

The pit was deeper than it had any right to be, the soil having collapsed from both sides to make a sinkhole resembling nothing so much as a giant ant-lion den. The number of corpses scattered about, still being removed, did little to remove the impression.

I found a ladder supporting downward traffic, and entered the pit. It was a good six or seven Rhishisikks deep, a formidable barrier to any invading forces. The loose earth was mingled with broken masonry, carved from the grey stone of the island itself, covered in a layer of brickwork, the outer layer of which had been whitewashed. (Or perhaps lighter grey washed, I’m not concerned enough to learn the specifics.)

[You have successfully tapped this recent magical site for Earth mana. 2/3 Earth mana have been stored.]

I did sense spirits, not many of them, nor of great power, but they were well below us, deep into the bedrock. From the ‘flare’ (Think of someone flashing light from a mirror, or clapping their hands, or radiating hostility, only toward one’s mystic senses. That is flare.), they were quite busy, probably setting up other regions of our wall to collapse.

There is a danger in tapping mana too much, but for a few hours, I tapped the magic of the site and made runestones of available stonework.

“Stop that at once!” she commanded. Du Jing was short, white haired, wrinkled (more smile lines than frown), and about two thirds as wide around the waist as she was tall. Imagine a large pumpkin lodged in the stomach of an otherwise thin person, then add fat in enough places to balance it out as natural.

It was revolting for me to look upon, but not every truth needs to be spoken.

“Why?” I asked.

“You are ruining the site for ritual investigation!”

“But we already know what happened.” I shouted back.

“Do we, now?” She said, sliding in a most unladylike manner down the side of the ladder, briefly stopping herself every six rungs or so. “Tell me what happened, infant.”

“Send me a group request, and I can SHOW you.” I responded.

[You have been invited to a group by Du Jing, Mistress of the Immortal Earth and Controller of Your Fate.]

I joined her group, which included Do Meng and Xeng Bai, who were still making their way down the ladder. I shared with her my mental perceptions, linking them to her own set of mystical senses. In my cautions against magic, I may have neglected that each of us learns magic, perceives it, in our own way.

“Oh! I see, I see. And I see that we shall need more mana for this summoning and exorcism than I had originally thought. It would have been more considerate of them to employ a few larger spirits rather than this motley assortment of lesser ones.”

“Exorcism? Isn’t that overly hostile?”

“And what would YOU recommend?”

“Releasing their mystic bonds and oaths, perhaps to replace them with our own?”

“Ah-ah-ah. I like the way you think, but no. That is far too dangerous. Do Meng, Xeng Bai, get DOWN here. You’re making us professionals look bad!”

She picked up one of my runestones, a wedge of broken rock. “This is just HORRIBLE work. Nicely executed, but it shows the novitiate level of your abilities.”

“Thank you.” I said, trying not to be offended. The truth is that I hadn’t done a lot with my earth abilities in some time. If I hadn’t made so many Death Skull batteries for my goblin master (was it already two years ago?), I wouldn’t have done so well.

“Okay, we’re going to need to set up a rank four battery. Just support us where you can, and follow our directions, and if you even ATTEMPT anything we haven’t told you to do, I will bury you alive and build a new wall on top of you. You understand?”

“Nothing without being told to.” I agreed.

Level FOUR battery? Du Jing was either very skilled, or very insane.

Likely both.

Yes, sorry, my System had come back online without so much as reboot message.