The first bolt fell like stray lightning upon Lieze's army. An airburst heralded the projectile's disastrous impact, sinking through the flesh of a Rot Behemoth and pinning its corpulent body to the ground. Gravewalkers, Horrors, and Flesh Elementals moved forward to fill the gap created by the Behemoth's death.
The skittering of bony legs against the harsh soil reminded Lieze of birds startled into flight. Bonecrawlers of all shapes and persuasions charged towards the mountains faster than any human or Dwarf could hope to halt, well on their way to intercepting the legions of axe-wielding warriors mobilised to defend their home.
Lieze was lost in the horde, trying not to stand out and draw attention to herself. With respect to her noticeable head of snow-white hair, she had pulled her hood up to obfuscate her appearance. The arrows and bolts and ton-weight stones fell like rain upon the battlefield, cascading from the impenetrable southern gate. No siege weapon had any right to be firing as quickly or with as much power as those Dwarven machines. Alberich had put his powers of enchantment to good use, Lieze thought.
A forward detachment of Dwarves spearheaded a suicidal charge to sow disarray within her ranks, shimmering weapons held high above their heads as if to offer a challenge. They ignored the Bonecrawlers entirely, allowing them to slither behind enemy lines. The headstrong strategy caused Lieze to click her tongue - she had no time to be delayed with skirmishes when every passing second saw more of her thralls being torn apart by the siege weapons.
A great shadow passed along the plains, giving the Dwarves precious few seconds to witness the executor of their imminent demise. Before they could reach Lieze's vanguard, the unit's cohesion was shattered as the Manticore swooped low with its gargantuan claws, cleaving iron, steel, and flesh alike.
Pitiful death throes accompanied the ribbons of tattered skin and muscle flying through the air, giving Lieze precisely the opportunity she needed to move in for the kill. By the time the Dwarves had recovered from the aerial attack, they were beset on all sides by Gravewalkers, flailing their limbs to escape from the thralls' ever-hungering maws.
Lieze didn't waste time enjoying their screams, and instead commanded the rest to march straight through the carnage. As soon as the surviving, struggling Dwarves were surrounded, the rain of artillery assaulting the undead army began to pivot, swivelling to the likes of Drayya and Lüngen's forces to avoid injuring their own men - even if their fates were already sealed.
"Fools…" Lieze smirked, "We've been underestimated. Thanks to all the improvements we've implemented with [Necromantic Alchemy], a single Gravewalker is more of a threat than any of these Dwarves could possibly imagine."
Her train of thought was interrupted by an explosion to the east. Cerulean stars skipped through the air at the point of impact, heralding another barrage of enchanted cannonballs which tore into the army's numbers. Another addition to the Dwarven arsenal sank itself into the cracked soil just ahead of Lieze's position. It looked to her like some kind of enormous wand, with a thin shaft studded with tiny, metal spikes topped by a spherical head. The object had been fired from a ballista, landing askew in the ground. Its tip crackled with unstable energy arcing into the nearby landscape.
"...A lightning rod?" Lieze wondered, "But instead of attracting lightning, it's somehow generating it… I shouldn't let the thralls get anywhere near that thing."
Simple enough, she thought - that was, until a handful of identical pylons sank into the ground surrounding her unit. In a matter of seconds, she and a small group of thralls had been boxed into a pen of electricity, blocking any avenue of escape. The string of continuous lightning connecting each pylon spoke of their true purpose - they weren't weapons, per se, but methods of immobilising an enemy's movements.
"Damn it…" She swivelled her head, heart sinking as the gravity of the situation set in, "We're sitting ducks!"
The rest of the army was moving on without her. She couldn't risk delaying their approach any longer, but remaining within that trap was just asking to be annihilated. Her mind scrambled for an answer as she examined the thralls by her side. Grabbing the scraps of a Gravewalker's clothing, she dragged the creature towards the static enclosure, taking great care to avoid straying too close. Streaks of rogue lightning dashed the soil with scorch marks, prepared to leap towards anything with a pulse.
Staff of Thraldom's MP - 3,321 / 3,417
The Gravewalker's body began to boil and shiver as she channelled a [Corpse Explosion] through her focus. With a stiff kick to its exposed spine, she launched the minion towards one of the pylons, which reacted by striking it with a continuous arc of electricity. The force of the explosion blew apart the strange contraption, opening up a gap in the wall of lightning.
"I'll need to spread the thralls even thinner to prevent too many of them from being caught at once…" Lieze muttered, "For now, we need to get out of here before those cannons rip us to pieces!"
She funnelled the thralls out with deliberate care, instructing them to remain a certain distance away from the remaining pylons. The army's march had continued unabated, singling her force out among the swelling horde. More pylons were fired from the gate, forming devious walls of impassable static intended to delay the Order's advance.
The Bonecrawlers, however, proved too quick for the siege weapons - or, indeed, the infantry - to handle. Their early start at the beginning of the battle allowed them to gain ground at an extraordinary rate. As they rounded the Dwarven army, only a few warriors were dispatched to prevent their charge in order to retain a stalwart presence on the battlefield, leading to an abundance of the arachnid thralls breaking through the rear guard.
Once they had a grip on the gate's watchtowers and began working their way up to the battlements, the first step of Lieze's plan was complete. As she expected, those responsible for manning the siege weapons were forced to waste time repelling the Bonecrawlers, giving her army ample time to overcome the maze of electrical pylons without fear of continued bombardment.
An inevitable clash with the Dwarven vanguard awaited them on the approach. Without long-range weaponry to assist them, their morale had taken a staggering blow - a weakness Lieze wouldn't pass up the opportunity to exploit.
As the army converged upon the gate in a crescent formation, the Dwarves were forced to spread their numbers thin in order to prevent a single thrall from passing through and ruining their cohesion. Greatshields formed an impenetrable shelf below a formation of enchanted arbalests which peppered the thralls with powerful volleys as they made their way through the labyrinth of pylons.
But no amount of defenders could resist the tide of rotten flesh. Lieze wondered what must have passed through the minds of those warriors in their final moments. Did they feel vindicated? Patriotic? Or perhaps they were afraid? She could never know - and had no interest in knowing. She did not despise them. They were merely tragic products of an imperfect world.
Blood ran like water across the plains, congealing onto flecks of torn muscle and organ tissue. Indecipherable, animalistic roars captured the theatre in a scene of agony and fury. Enchanted axes cleaved through rotting skulls, yanking arrangements of pus-drenched viscera from the bloated bellies of Gravewalkers. Dwarves were disembowelled, crushed, torn, eaten alive; screaming obscenities, prayers, the names of their children and lovers. They became one with the carnage, allowing the battlefield to melt into a single, bloody spectacle.
Atop the distant gate, a warhammer of enchanted steel slammed against the brickwork, striking a Bonecrawler with such force that its body was reduced to nothing but a stain of bleached ash. Two more arachnids leapt towards the attacker, attaching to his body but unable to pierce his armour with their elongated limbs. A single gauntlet came to rest upon a Bonecrawler's skull, shattering it into fragments with a sudden clench and staining the onyx gloves with discoloured brain fluid.
"Miserable fleas…" Alberich detached the second Bonecrawler from his side, throwing it to the ground before slamming his foot against its fragile cranium, "Mime!"
His brother was minding the battlements, crushing any Bonecrawler foolish enough to expose itself. At the mention of his name, the Dwarf peered over his shoulder.
"Leave this fodder to the others!" Alberich commanded, "Help me work the ballista!"
With a resolute nod, the two of them marched over to the rest of the skirmishers upon the tower, where a siege weapon had been overrun by the insectoid thralls. Alberich held the grip of his warhammer in both hands, closing his eyes to mutter a prayer.
Alberich's MP - 1,771 / 2,030
The reflective head took on a luminescent appearance, as if suffused with holy power. With a single swing, the warhammer emitted a wave of light which spilled over the gaps in the battlements, bathing the Dwarven defenders' weapons in a similar glow while disintegrating the bones of any thralls unlucky enough to be in the way.
"Mime!" He shouted again, "Get a bolt into that damnable machine!"
While his brother gathered ammunition for the ballista, he stomped over to the enormous siege weapon and slapped its side with his hand. At the point of contact, his palm radiated a cerulean light which seeped into the machine's foundations. He focused on its impeccable make - the winch, the bowstring, the barrel - improving each and every facet of the design with a magical infusion.
Alberich's MP - 1,310 / 2,030
"My king."
Mime stood behind him, hefting an enormous bolt as if it was made of paper. Alberich stowed his warhammer and took the shaft in both hands, once again pushing away the complications of the outside world to focus on another enchantment.
Alberich's MP - 1,190 / 2,030
The bolt began to glow and shiver. Tendrils of golden lightning began to arc from its tip. He and Mime worked together to slot the bolt into its rightful place on the ballista, pulling the bowstring back using both winches, causing the sound of a perilously tensioned rope to strain through the air.
"Alright…" Grabbing a spyglass from the floor, Alberich surveyed the battlefield, "Where are you…?"
As he peered between legions of thralls, numbers and letters appeared above their heads - an occurrence Alberich had once thought to be the result of a curse, but which he had come to appreciate for its applications. He scanned the endless wave of Gravewalkers and Flesh Elementals until a name separate from the rest entered his field of vision.
Lieze Sokalar
Level 51 Necromancer (Scion)
HP - 374 / 374 MP - 2,245 / 2,245
BODY - 4 MIND - 42 SOUL - 5
A cruel smirk crossed his rugged features, "That's the conqueror of Tonberg? A dainty girl in the twilight of her youth? This must be some kind of joke…"
He turned his gaze to Mime, "Fire at the group lagging behind the rest! That's where their leader is hiding!"
Lieze had been keeping an eye on the siege weapons in case they resumed their assault. She watched as one of the ballistae took on a strange luminescence. By the time she had reached into her Bag of Holding and retrieved the Portable Home, a strange, blinding light had formed at the weapon's tip, as if loaded with some kind of heavenly javelin.
"Not good…" She muttered, turning her attention to the Portable Home just as the ballista began to swivel towards her position, "I hope this works…"