A large explosion sounded through the village, stopping Ace from finishing his thought. Everyone present started looking around for the source. The group saw Allira come running towards them in a hurried sprint, panic clearly showing on her face.
"The orcs are attacking!" She yelled with a crack in her voice. Both Ace and the tall man sprung to action, Ace ran back to Sage's house to grab his gear while the tall man ran towards where the explosion was heard from. The village guard Goren ran up to Elder Urdusin with shield and spear in hand.
Ace saw both normal citizens and guards alike running around the streets. Some trying to hide while others gathering to fight back the opposing forces. A fire not far from Sage's house had started and was slowly spreading to nearby stands and crates. Some tried to put it out but whatever they did, nothing helped as the fire roared bigger and hotter by the minute.
Entering the house in a hurry, he accidentally saw a half clothed elf with her bare chest showing. In to much of a hurry to care, he quickly grabbed his sheath and leather gloves and left.
Kealon was pretty small but average at the same time. While there used to be a lot of people visiting the village, no one really had a reason to stay after clearing the dungeon a few times. That left only a small population to run the stands in the market and occupy the houses. But now that the threats of an orc invasion being just around the corner, hardly any normal citizen would want to stay, leaving only some of the adventurers and the guards.
Being told this was the case by elder a few days ago, this helped Ace ignore the burning buildings and focus solely on arriving at the village walls where the night guards stood, shooting down at the beasts in green skin.
"What's the situation?" Ace asked one of the archers.
"This side is doing fine, they're slowly pushing but they should only be able to break through the wall after losing too many. I think the west side needs help, that's where the mages are."
"Thank you!" Ace yelled and ran down the stairs again. The more west he ran, the more screaming he heard as well. Both kids and adults were running the fastest they could away from their houses when a large ball of fire crashed into the building next to them. Rubble was crashing down but before they were squished, Ace saved them with the help of an adrenaline rush. One he'd never experienced before.
The parents hugged their daughter and streams of tear rushed down their faces as they yelled "Thank you." from a distance
Running up the stairs and reaching the top of the wall, he looked out at the horde of orc mages gathered in lots of tiny groups. Each one gathering shards of flame into a larger and larger ball of fire.
From what Ace saw, the orcs were clothed in brown hooded robes. The orcs with the hood down were bald and tattoos covered their skin. Of what? Ace couldn't tell. Looking over the village wall, corpses littered the floor and screams of horror could be heard when another flaming ball of destruction was flung towards them. The spell crashed into a soldier not far from Ace and the screaming stopped instantaneously. For whatever reason, Ace's head felt cold but his body warm. Adrenaline was rushing through his veins but there he stood silently watching the horror unfold.
"Wake up!" A familiar voice yelled at him from behind and a slap across the back of his head woke him up. It was the tall man from before, this time however, he exuded a kind of unexplainable aura. "I'll need your help to get rid of those mages. If we don't, we won't be able to win this fight."
Ace nodded, not capable of opening his mouth for unexplicit reason.
The tall man suddenly grabbed the back of Ace's shirt and lifted him off the ground, carrying him to the edge of the wall.
"WHAT THE-"
Without warning, the tall man flung Ace towards one of the closer groups. Ace, now screaming out of his mind and flailing about, crashed into one of the orcs. The ball of fire that had been growing for the past couple of minutes dispersed and the orcs turned to Ace who was repeatedly smashing his hands into the mage orc's face.
Dodging the fists that came hurling towards him, he quickly recovered his senses and struck the two assailants. To his surprise, they seemed too weak to be what he would consider orc warriors.
"Perhaps they don't teach the mage orcs how to fight in melee-" He quickly interrupted his train of thought to focus on the battle. The two mages started speaking in a language that didn't seem like the orcish yelling he knew and decided to act. "If it wasn't orcish, it was a spell." He told himself.
And surely enough, as Ace stuck his dagger into one of the orc's necks with [Dagger Strike], the other had formed an ice sphere similar to Lia's. It hit his arm. Not feeling any pain or discomfort and only something tugging on his arm, Ace had to remind himself about his lacking sense of touch. Blessing this opportunity and fearing for his life, he jumped towards the orc mage and ran his dagger through the neck of the orc.
The last orc of the, used to be, trio, slumped down the second the dagger left it's neck. Looking across the field, Ace saw the tall man glide through trios of mages, slicing their necks one after the other. The spells that had covered the air just moments ago, were slowly dissipating. Ace couldn't help but marvel at the scenes.
Soon, the orcs that had just minutes ago been a force strong enough to bring down the entirety of the village, had turned into a bloody and screaming mess.
The robed orcs that still lived were trying to escape but the tall man swiftly dashed across the field, catching up to them within seconds and slicing their heads off with a single motion.
"He's like a god on the battlefield..." Ace thought to himself in disbelief. His hand was trembling and the rest of his body wanted to join in and fly amongst enemies just like the tall man.
It didn't take long for the tall man to finish off the last few fleeing orcs. They then regrouped by the village wall.
"What'd you think?" The tall man asked him. Once again, Ace had a hard time getting his words out. It frustrated him that he didn't understand why and so as a way to compromise, he tried using hand signs to explain his speaking situation but was abruptly cut off.
"Don't worry. I understand why you can't talk to me. For now, we need to go help the others. Speak with me after this all is done and I'll tell you some stuff you probably want to know."
Ace felt his chest become lighter hearing that.
"You go back to the gate and see if they need help and I'll go south. If everything goes well, we should be meeting up at the east wall within an hour."