[Ouroboros' End]
Standing gathered on the largest hill in the vicinity, Darganth's group watched as spells started tearing through the air once Melidra's army started the assault. Having assembled under a cover of darkness that would've looked unnatural enough to raise alarms had any defenders taken a close enough look at it, the army had abruptly appeared just over two kilometers away from the wall in perfect formation.
With a volley of spells, the dozen Liches Melidra had under her control then started the battle. Streaking through the silence that had covered the grassy plain until then, their attack broke the peace and quiet when it erupted into deafening quakes that shook the tower it struck. The ensuing blast ripped through its front-facing side as if the enchanted stone wasn't even there, flooding the first floor of the tower with enough fire and lightning that the pressure pushed the massive tower over a dozen meters into the air before gravity reasserted itself and its pieces started raining back down.
However, even before the first stones struck the battlements, sporadic counterattacks flew toward the undead. Streaking forth from both the battlement and the arrow slits inlaid across its flat frontal surface, spells soon started erupting amid the horde of zombies. With each spell, dozens of undead bodies were consumed by the elements, while those slightly further away had entire limbs consumed by the raging magic. Still, the horde of undead marched on, with wounded zombies not even slowing while new ones filled in the gaps left in the formation.
Hovering behind this horde were the Liches, their vicinity left completely untouched by the defenders' response. Any spell that was aimed well enough to strike true through the darkness that obscured their position seemingly lost its momentum once it started to pass by above the zombies, causing it to curve down and descend rapidly so that it landed in the mass of expendable undead bodies.
Unbothered by the constantly fluctuating number of their troops, the Liches started gathering mana for a second volley mere seconds after the tower fell. Like a raging storm, mana radiated out from their forms as spells formed in their skeletal hands. As it rained down on the zombies that passed by below them, this overflowing magical energy was absorbed by their bodies, strengthening them and resulting in that section of the horde moving ever so slightly faster than the rest.
After a second or two, the Liches then unleashed their second volley. Like before, a mixture of fire and lightning spells shot toward the wall, with the latter being the first to strike. Trailed by a blue streak of crackling electricity, they erupted into arcing flashes of electricity as a barrier sprang up just centimeters ahead of the tower and intercepted them. Clashing in a bright shower of sparks and flashes of light, the barrier of hardened light kept flaring up and flickering out as the collisions between the two magical forces cut into it.
However, despite the damage, the walls' defenses held strong. That is, until the fire spells trailing slightly behind struck. In an instant, half a dozen explosions erupted in quick succession, sending a shockwave and flames crashing into the already strained barrier.
Even from a distance, Darganth saw the barrier crack under the onslaught. Deep, almost scarlet red flames briefly flared against its surface as the barrier endured for a moment before abruptly flooding through it as the first crack opened.
Bathing the tower behind the barrier in a torrent of fire and heat, the spells then fell upon their intended target.
Under this onslaught, the tower lasted longer than Darganth had expected. Even as fire melted the stone itself and rushed through the windows to consume the soldiers inside, the structure remained upright. Soon, defenders even started to find success in fighting back against the encroaching flames, with water and earth magic being used to dowse the raging inferno and repair the damage.
Thus, when the spell's power ran out and the flames died down, the tower still stood. Though most of the wall facing toward Darganth's groups was melted into nothing more than a glowing slag that slowly dripped down in front of the wall, hastily erected pillars of stone kept the upper floors from collapsing downward, leaving them functional as a platform for mages and, importantly, the massive weapon mounted on its uppermost level.
Seeing the sparks already gathering around the harpoon-shaped piece of metal that formed its core, Darganth's eyes widened before the view even fully cleared.
"Barriers!" As he shouted his order, Darganth's arm already rose to channel his own spell. Forming a rectangular barrier of spatial magic, he braced himself and waited. Simultaneously, dozens of additional barriers of different elements flared to life all around him, with ogres and the higher undead in Melidra's army alike acting on his order without question.
Moments later, the defenders finished aiming their weapon and fired. As they did, the crackles of electricity around the multiple meter-long metal rod that formed its core rapidly surged in power, with the arcing electricity flashing through the air until all of the gathered power erupted from its tip in one massive beam.
Consisting of hundreds of individual bolts of lightning, the beam's core tore through the air while smaller bolts split off it in a way that it looked similar to a fir tree with its branches. All along its path, these branches struck with the full force of a bolt of lightning when they found solid matter to latch onto, singing and cratering the plains and cutting a meter-wide gash through the zombies.
Meanwhile, the core of the beam managed to push through the magic shielding the Liches and diverting attacks away from them. Reaching the barriers they had put up by then without as much as straying a centimeter from its target, the beam started to split as it clashed with the wall of darkness in its path. Dozens of individual arcs of lightning latched onto the barrier, wandering across its surface as if testing where it was the weakest. Slowly, this caused more and more of the attacking magic to seep into the barrier, with glowing cracks of blue energy spreading through the darkness until they completely covered it in a web-like pattern.
However, beyond these minuscule faults, there was no sign of damage that developed in the barrier, making its collapse not even a second later all the more sudden. In an instant, the lightning broke through the wall of darkness in a dozen different spots as the beams' many tendrils simultaneously pushed past the darkness. Snapping together on the other side and tearing long gashes into the barrier as the beam gathered back into one coherent mass, it flashed forward in an instant and struck one of the Liches faster than any more defensive spells could form.
As it tore through the Lich in an instant, annihilating its body entirely in the process, Melidra's expression twisted. The lost zombies could be replaced in time and with negligible effort. In contrast, each Lich had taken significant effort to raise them up from being common skeletons. The loss of even this one was something she had tried to avoid, hence the darkness obscuring them and the large-scale gravity magic that diverted attacks into the zombies.
Meanwhile, the reaction among the rest of their group lay somewhere between surprise and relief. Turning their gazes onto the tower in near unison, it was Jennia who voiced their collective thoughts. "That was a dangerous amount of power, I don't think I could've endured that if it had hit me."
"Me neither. Maybe a portal would've allowed me to divert it, but with that much magical energy, I'm not confident that I could've kept it stable long enough to send much of that attack elsewhere." Yldra added.
Hearing his exact thoughts voiced out loud, Darganth could only nod in agreement. This attack showed exactly why Melidra's undead were leading the first charge. Despite the extensive information they got about the wall's defenses through their cooperation with the town's guard and the inspection of the parts still controlled by them, their knowledge was spotty at best.
Though one continuous structure, the walls' construction had stretched across anywhere from a decade to multiple centuries, depending on the source. In either case, this resulted in noticeable differences in the enchantments and weapons of the different sections. Though some of these were merely a case of different spells and elements being used for the same effect, other differences contained nasty surprises that were purposefully intermixed at random to make it harder for attackers to prepare for them.
With that knowledge in mind, Darganth wasn't going to risk himself or anyone else, especially as he had seen the power of some of these weapons and enchantments on different sections of the wall. Or at least he wasn't going to do so until they ensured that they wouldn't have to fear such surprises.
"Can the remaining Liches still take out that tower?" Darganth asked Melidra after a moment of consideration.
"Depends on how quickly that weapon can fire again. But with a distraction, most certainly." She answered him, turning toward Cehlya with those words.
Raising an eyebrow, the goddess answered after a few moments. "That can be arranged."
Stepping forward, Cehlya raised her arms toward a section of the zombies. Slowly, streams of black necrotic energy started draining out of the undead and toward her. One by one, this caused the zombies to wither and disintegrate as the energy fueling their undead existence was extracted from them, with hundreds of zombies having faded after just a second.
Continuing to siphon energy even as Melidra's troops literally disintegrated around her, it took Cehlya only a few moments until the toll of her actions crossed a thousand. It was only then that the flow of energy ceased as she closed her fist in an abrupt gesture. Lowering one of her hands, she turned her other arm toward one of the few zombies remaining near the hill where their group stood, pointing two fingers toward it in a casual gesture before channeling the gathered power into that one zombie.
As the concentrated stream of necrotic energy flowed into it, the zombie's body started to convulse. With the sound of snapping bones, its arm twisted back at an impossible angle, shortly followed by its spine suddenly snapping backward and bending at a right angle while a piece of flesh exploded away from its torso, ripping a gaping hole into the flesh of what had been a dead but undamaged body.
However, when this was then followed by the left arm shooting outward before bending backward at the elbow, the body stopped merely ripping itself apart. Instead, the limb abruptly ballooned in size, becoming a hulking monstrosity of three meters in length, making it larger than the entire rest of the body. Before this could tilt the zombie to the side by much, its left leg followed, growing to roughly the same length and letting the zombie shoot up to a towering four meters in height. Moments later, when its torso burst open a second time, only to now similarly expand as the two limbs, this towering height rose once again as the zombies' transformation into a hulking brute took shape.
As this transformation ended after just a second of these bone-breaking twists and tissue-erupting bursts of growth, the zombie was replaced by a towering figure of almost eight meters. Covered in muscle from head to toe, the figure towered above even most ogres and outmatched them in muscle mass.
Standing motionless as the rest of the zombies still marched on despite the massive hole that had appeared in their formation, the creature waited for Cehlya's orders. Letting her gaze sweep across the wall, the goddess waited a moment before pointing her arm forward to give her command.
Once this happened, the hulking zombies immediately burst into action. Disappearing in a blur as it dashed forward, it ran in the direction Cehlya had pointed with thundering strides. Quickly catching up to the first row of zombies, it then broke past them by leaping over their ranks, slowing only briefly as it landed before breaking out into a sprint once more.
As it rushed across the last few hundred meters in front of the wall, spells from the defenders started raining down onto the mutated zombie. At first, these left a trail of magical eruptions in its path as mages failed to adjust to the sudden increase in speed of their new target. Those few spells that found their mark meanwhile didn't even dent the zombie's skin, merely covering its pale gray skin in some dust and grime.
But as the mages started to get a feeling for the zombie's speed after a second or two, the pressure from these individually harmless spells started to mount. With more and more attacks striking simultaneously, small impacts that didn't even move its shoulder on their own combined to briefly stagger the creatures.
Though still not enough to stop its charge, this succeeded in slowing the mutated zombie down. When it then came within a few dozen meters of the wall, its speed had already dropped by almost a third, losing precious momentum for the jump that followed. Still, between its strength and the remaining momentum, it managed to leap far into the air, briefly escaping the onslaught of spells and soaring toward the wall.
Landing about a fourth of the way toward the top, the zombie came crashing into the wall, shattering the stone as it dug its massive hands into it. In response, enchantments flared to life all across the surface, with glowing symbols and entire spell circles surging with mana as they prepared to unleash a storm of elemental effects.
However, by the time they activated, the mutated zombie had long since vanished from its landing spot. Climbing higher with a lunge, it dug its fingers into the wall a dozen or so meters further up. Again, enchantments lit up all around it in response. But as they were mainly meant to defend against structures like siege towers or earthen ramps, they were once again too slow to catch the zombie before it moved higher once more.
From their position on the hill, Darganth's group could see the effects this climb was having in full. Across the section of the wall that stretched all the way to the next tower to both sides, spell-fire had largely fallen silent as the mages hurried to deal with this immediate problem. In turn, this meant that the zombie horde met little to no opposition as it steadily advanced toward the wall. Thus, by the time that the mutated zombie had reached three-fourths up the wall, the zombie horde attacking that section of the wall was already within a hundred meters of the wall.
Just then, the defenders' counterattack struck. Having also used the time in which they hadn't attacked to its fullest, a massive visible spell circle appeared in the skies above. Powered by easily hundreds of mages spread across almost half a kilometer of wall, it easily matched an early mythic rank's spells despite only being powered by fourth ranks and lower.
When this spell then struck, the wall quaked anew. Descending as a glowing pillar of white light, it hit the mutated zombie perfectly, bathing it in its blinding radiance as it washed over the creature.
Suddenly, a second quake ripped through the wall, followed shortly by the sound of falling stones. Immediately, all gazes whipped around toward the already damaged tower. What they found there was a smoldering ruin of blackened and melted stone. Around it, the flickering aftereffects of the spells that had struck it still lingered, while a trail of rapidly dispersing mana led back all the way toward the Liches, who were already retreating back into the artificial darkness all around.
At the sight, the spell above started flickering. Though their training kept most of the mages disciplined and focused on continuing their contribution to the ritual spell, that wasn't enough. The dozen or so mages that either abandoned their post or were too shocked to keep a stable mana flow active were enough to destabilize the ritual, causing the lead mage to lose control over the spell and forcing him to disperse its power before it could backfire on him.
Still, even with this premature end to it, the spell had left its mark on the mutated zombie. Though still alive, its body was a broken mess. Its entire left arm and a good portion of its torso were missing, while skin and flesh across what remained of its body were barely holding together after having been slowly but surely disintegrated by the beam of light.
But neither Cehlya nor Melidra cared for that. Between the zombies that were now at the foot of the wall and the destroyed tower, the creature had done its job as a distraction.
"Let's hope that the weapon in that tower was the last truly dangerous surprise." Melidra said as she glanced back at the rest of her army. Standing in the magical darkness their group had conjured to obscure the area, they stood still as the zombies marched ahead. Though as Melidra then gave the signal, the horde of skeletons and reanimated beasts followed in the footsteps of the zombies.