War - 2

	Doshellas added to the chaos with his entangling shots.  Not a word passed between them; they both knew their business.  Luanea swept her blade low and took the legs out from under one marauder, then planted a kick from her armored boot on the backside of another that had charged Verashon.  Her husband reacted without looking, slicing his blade at neck height as the attacker stumbled by, cutting his neck open to the bone.  He turned on his heel and parried a blow from another sharktooth raider, then turned it into a lunge that knocked the other man back two paces.  He thrust deep with his sword on the lunge and impaled the shorter man.

	Kyria squealed in pain as one of the raiders managed to land a blow on her.  The tentacles disappeared as she tried to back away from the marauders who had made it over the barricade.  She stumbled and rolled poorly.  She screamed as a blade came down on her back, then Axio was on them.  The Aasimar roared in defiance as he slashed his magic schiavona in a tight arc, cleaving one raider in half with deific muscle.  He added the power of a wrathful smite on the next blow, and a wave of rippling purple energy leaped from his blade to his target, crushing the second target’s ribcage like a paper ball.  Another raider sprang over the barricades and bore Kyria to the ground, but Axio simply grabbed him and crushed, shattering his ribs.

	Cavria wiped sweat from her eyes and gritted her teeth.  There were… at least forty left.  This wasn’t going well.  She ducked a hasty crossbow shot and stabbed deep, killing the shooter with a Divine Smite.  Each one used up a bit of her magic pool, and she could feel blood seeping from a half-dozen wounds on her arms and chest.  Her smites had become a balance between health and attacking the enemy, now.

	Linus had no such problems.  He was a wellspring of divine power that far eclipsed the others, even with their divine ancestry.  Experience allowed him a deeper connection to his God than the others could muster.  “I laid low four dragons, you imbeciles!” he screamed.  A flash of divine power arced from his sword to blast a pirate to scraps.  He drew a javelin from his quiver and rammed it halfway deep in a raider’s stomach, then drove it down, pinning him to the ground.  Axio hissed in pain as four more marauders approached him, firing crossbows, and two bolts made it past his shield.

	A wizard in black armor drew up his arms and cast a spell, sending another wave of crashing water down over the clearing.  Kyria and Doshellas fell as the water knocked them off their feet, and the others barely held on.  The marauders fared no better, but they had backup.  More raiders ran from the darkness and leaped into the clearing, shouting their war cries.  “For the Crushing Wave!” bellowed several.

	Kyria struggled to her feet, nursing a wound.  Cavria staggered as the Haste spell Kyria had cast abruptly broke.  She feebly waved her glaive in a defensive pattern, but she felt the bite of steel get past her armor a few times before the world cleared back up.  Kyria raised one hand and sent a blast of lightning off into the crowd, nailing the wizard who had cast the Tidal Wave.  He fell without a sound.

	Cavria snapped out of her daze and crouched into an overhead arc with her glaive, clearing a step around her, then drove the glaive deep into the innards of a sharktooth raider.

	“They’re too much!” one shouted, and he turned to run.  Doshellas shot him neatly through the eye, and he went down like a sack of potatoes.  Luanea cleaved another then cast a spell of Inflict Wounds.  A bandit mid-leap over the wagon eroded into bones in an instant, as glowing black boils consumed his flesh.

	Whatever signal the others had been waiting for, that was apparently close enough.  Half the raiders broke and ran, while the other half dug in.  Axio grabbed one by the neck and hurtled him with all his deific might, slamming his body into the ground with such force that the earth deformed around him.  He straightened up and twisted his armored chest around to put more force behind a sword blow to the next marauder, who managed to slash him before he fell.  The Aasimar stumbled and reeled back, then screamed in sudden pain as something planted two red-hot spikes of agony in his lower back.  He toppled to one knee, not noticing the men around him suddenly yelling.

	Suivi dipped in and out of the fight like a ghost, cutting and slashing with his blades, then fading away.  He darted backwards, swinging one blade in a defensive pattern as three pirates advanced on him, then one man suddenly yelped as the bottle of alchemist’s fire the pickpocket had left on him exploded, setting him aflame.

	Cavria took another blow across the chest from the thug she was fighting.  He wasn’t armored well, like some of his comrades, but he hit like an avalanche with his club.  She deflected a blow with the haft of her spear, and then twisted the head of the glaive up with the momentum of his strike and sliced his arm open at the shoulder.  He grunted in pain and staggered forward, trying to swap the weapon to his other hand, and she reached in and broke his neck before he could.

	Linus roared in rage and pain as one of the wizards managed to hit him with a blast of necrotic magic.  Light spilled from his eyes and the edge of his blade as he unleashed a staggering shockwave of magic through the weapon and into the wizard, who flew apart at the joints.  “I can keep this up all night, vermin!” he snarled.  “Can you?”  Noble arrived at his side once more, crashing through the waves of raiders.  Linus noted some of them starting to run and hurtled a javelin at one of the ones attacking Kyria.  He missed, and the missile soared past to lodge in the tree behind Verashon.

	He and Luanea were back-to-back, now.  Each had to constrain their movements to avoid hitting the other, but not being backstabbed was tradeoff enough.  Verashon swiped a blade aside and cut deep, then bent forward a pace and thrust both hands out, sliding his weapons between the ribs of his attacker.

	Their respite was not coming, he thought bleakly.  Yes, some enemies were running, but there were just so many…

	Luanea gasped in pain as a blade made its way past her chainmail.  A few links fell to the ground, and she had to cast a healing spell on herself to keep from falling.  Doshellas shot her attacker through the head, but then had to sprint away as several marauders broke free of the melee and chased him.

	Kyria struggled back up to one knee and pressed her thumbs together.  A cone of flame erupted from her fingers, engulfing several marauders.  The light from the burning men spilled over the chaos, casting weird shadows over the scene.

	Axio managed to look up from his daze and saw pools of blood beneath his feet, though they weren’t spreading.  Something horribly heavy was moving on his back, and when he forced his way to his feet, his balance had shifted tremendously.  One of his opponents seemed to overcome his hesitation and charged in, and Axio blinked back to focus as he realized that he was suddenly without his chest armor.  He twisted out of the way of the strike, and felt a chill of sensation as whatever was in his back bumped against something cold.  He felt a jolt of sudden, awed terror as he realized what was happening.  “BRIGANDS, FACE JUDGMENT!” he roared for effect, and he took to the skies.

	Cavria gasped in pain as something hot and sharp broke through her forehead, sending splurts of blood across her eyes.  She took a hammerblow to the chest that knocked her onto her back, and her holy symbol amulet fell away into the gark grass.  She scrambled back up and wiped the blood from her eyes, but her attacker took one look at her and ran, screaming.

	Linus reached out with his Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and grabbed one raider, pulling him into the path of another’s crossbow.  The impact of the shot didn’t kill him, so Linus drove his sword through his stomach and cast another Smite, blasting him down.  The shooter dropped his crossbow and ran, and suddenly Linus was alone.  He spun to face the main camp again, and his jaw dropped.

	Cavria stood and watched in awe as Axio spread his new wings.  They weren’t bat-like ones like she had had, but they weren’t gull-like ones, as the angels she had seen in the Arbor possessed.  They were a strange, eerie gold, but shot through with sharp lines of something pale and metallic, crossing over the feathers and the empty space between them.  Lines of deep red trailed directly up the outer edge of the wing, and they seemed to bleed the platinum color down over the gold feathers below.

	Not one attacker was left.  They were all dead or running, or crawling if they couldn’t run.  The fires Kyria had set were burning themselves out, but the light wasn’t dimming much.  Axio’s wings were glowing.

	Cavria felt the urge to kneel.  She didn’t, but only because she couldn’t move.  Doshellas slowly returned to the circle of upturned wagons and logs, his jaw hanging open.  Axio slowly settled down on the ground, his wings beating, dripping his blood from the feathers.  They had burst from his lower back, but when they compressed, they rose above his shoulders.

	The Aasimar unsteadily landed and drew a deep breath.  He kinked his back and stretched, breathing heavily the whole time.  “That… was frightening,” he muttered.  He refocused his eyes on his gawping comrades and gasped.  “Cavria!”

	She blinked at the sudden fear in his voice.  “…Huh?”

	He took a few quick steps over to her and gently rested a hand on her bloody cheek.  “Are you all right?” he asked.  Her new horns looked quite painful.