Daybreak:Alpha Chapter

Chapter 13 - Massive Strike

Torsten Asgeirsen closed his eyes as he immersed his thoughts in the icy winds.

Above the cloud cover and the raging blizzard below, Torsten and his drake soared through clear skies at the head of the column. The cold air buffeted his exposed face and would have left ice crystals in his thin beard were it not for the enchanted shirt he wore under heavy drakeskin armor. Yet to an experienced Outrider, that feeling of cutting through the wintry winds was the epitome of blissful serenity.

No man could become an Outrider without loving this paradise. To appreciate the flawless beauty of the open heavens, unveiled from any bashful clouds and untouched by the desires of men -- such was the duty of every being who wished to master the skies.

The Wickers' air cavalry simply did not understand it. Despite all their three-dimensional combat training, they had no real feel for aerial maneuvers. To them, the skies were just multiple layers of flat plains at different altitudes.

Torsten almost felt sorry for those poor heathens... almost.

After all, those Wickers -- and the Imps who once backed them -- were the aggressors. They were the ones who settled upon the Hyperboreans' promised land and began over a thousand years of enmity. All the wars that resulted were entirely their fault.

They deserved to die.

...Or so he told himself.

Torsten did not like this mission, if he were to be honest. There was no glory in subjecting a civilian populace to massive overhead bombardment. But the Weichsel army gathering there left him no choice.

As the firstborn son of Admiral Asgeirr Vintersvend and the commander of Polarlys' air group, it was his duty to led the assault. Against this duty to his people, his nation, his family and his comrades and his friends, his personal feelings and sense of ethics weighed next to nothing.

With concentration willed back to his Pathfinder guidance spell, Torsten realized that the distance to Nordkreuz had fallen to within a kilopace at last.

As soon as fresh intelligence revealed that the Wickers in the Skagen Peninsula were rushing back, Torsten's father -- Admiral Winter -- pushed his skywhales ahead of the main army. It was a gamble, but the only way to seize Nordkreuz with an inferior force was to destroy the city and its fortifications first. To deliver an overwhelming bombardment, the Admiral needed full air groups, undiminished by running air battles or interdictions.

Therefore the strike on Nordkreuz could not wait. Torsten and his men had sortied as soon as their payloads were attached. Their mission: to lay waste to the city and return before the Weichsel Phantoms could arrive.

Reaching into a pocket, Torsten pulled out four tiny pebbles before throwing them into the air. The runes on them triggered as they left his hand, bursting into flares of red, blue, yellow, and black. They formed an emergency call for aid in Hyperborean maritime communications. But on the precipice of battle, the combination carried yet another special meaning:

'The fate of our people lies in your hands.'

"Commence attack," Torsten sent to squadron leaders over the command telepathy channel as he pulled his drake into a leftward dive. "Group Polarlys with me to the eastern gate and army camp; Group Lyngbakr to southwestern docks and camp; Group Hafgufa the southern gate and camp; and Group Livjatan the central city and main docks. Brothers! Let's send these Wickers to the freezing mists of Hel!"

He didn't really need to repeat their orders. His men were the best and already knew their jobs. But he felt the moment needed a touch more 'oomph' to precede his last line. Unfortunately, his father hadn't passed down much in the ways of oratory skills.

"Yes Sir!"

The strike groups began splitting up even before their commanders responded. Covered in cloudy-gray illusory camouflage, volcanic drakes banked away from the aerial armada by the dozens before separate units -- looking less like formations and more like tiny hordes -- plunged into the clouds.

The Skagen Outriders didn't practice the neat patterns their Weichsel counterparts fought in. But then, they didn't need to. They much preferred scrambling the battle into one giant mess and letting individual superiority carry the day.

Not that they would face any aerial combat here.

As Torsten rushed out of the freezing clouds in a steep dive, he pulled out another two runes and activated them. His eyes began to radiate an icy blue as Snow Sight allowed them to pierce the blizzard. His partner's retracted wings also shimmered faintly, embraced by an Stormblessed spell that always shifted the winds to its favor.

Verifying his target in the distance, Torsten tugged the reins to swerved right before urging his drake into a yet steeper plunge.

Thirty-one more volcanic drakes followed in his wake. Each of them dived towards the ground at a slightly different angle, aiming for a separate grouping of tents and buildings as gravity accelerated them through over a thousand paces of air.

Seven hundred... six hundred... five hundred!

"DROP! DROP! DROP!" Torsten shouted over both the howling winds and the telepathy channel.

Releasing his reins for a moment, Torsten first touched two runes in the front of his saddle, disengaging the 'safety' sticking spell that kept the payload containers closed. He then reached behind him and grabbed two small metal loops held up by the back of his saddle. Yanking both forward with all his strength, he pulled out the heavy duty cords attached to each loop. These cords fed through several pulleys, around the drake's sides, and connected to the lids of two long, metal boxes bound to the mount's underside.

Tugged back by the cords, the containers' metal lids slid open, revealing hundreds of fist-sized stones.

As Torsten took back his reins and urged his drake out of its dive, gravity and the increasing gap in velocity accelerated those rocks out of their compartment. They scattered into the air as they emerged, forming roughly two columns of massed bomblets that fell through the wind towards the gatehouse below.

Every one of them had one or more runes inscribed, all set to trigger on hard impact.

They came in numerous varieties, from single-spell runestones that exploded in lightning or shrapnel, to multi-spell combinations that could penetrate structures and set their interiors ablaze. There were even runes attached to shrunken down barrels of noxious alchemical liquids.

But the most dangerous kind, packed all the way in the back to avoid being struck by counterspells, came from the Admiral himself. These runestones surrounded themselves with a Dispel Barrier once they entered free fall to protect against Ether Seekers and opposing Dispels. Once they landed, the Animated rocks would roll until they struck earth or stone ground. From there, high-powered Tectonic spells would bury deep underground before sending violent tremors throughout the city and its outskirts.

With over a hundred runestones per container, two containers per drake, and four groups totaling one-hundred-twenty-eight drakes, Torsten's strike force would dump more than twenty-six thousand magical munitions over the city of Nordkreuz.

Amidst the blizzard brought forth by Admiral Winter, the skies literally rained death.

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General Wiktor von Falkenhausen looked down as he examined his arcane pocketwatch. He could hear its faint ticking, managed by a combination of mechanical durability and magical precision. The device had a reputation for being faultlessly accurate, which meant that he had been standing outside, in the heavy snow, for thirty-eight minutes and thirteen seconds now.

He wasn't really bothered by it himself. Every mage had at least one set of enchanted clothing that kept him comfortable and dry regardless of weather. Such conveniences were just another part of the Holy Father's blessing for those who carried the burdens of leadership.

Prayers from the blessed to the Holy Father have ended with Noblesse Oblige for as long as Hyperion history remembered. Certainly, there were always some who forsook their duties and flouted their gifts; but Wiktor himself had always taken those two words seriously.

Although he was ashamed to admit: he had not prayed to the Holy Father for about three weeks now -- not since the Caliphate declared war on their ally; not even after his daughter Cecylia left home for her first war.

Of course he was worried. What father worthy of the role did not worry, even if it was his fourth child in the military? Well, third, since he had already lost one.

But what would prayers accomplish?

He had faith the Holy Father would look after her immortal soul. It was her worldly health that concerned him.

After all, Cecylia's toughness was entirely an act. Growing up, she had fallen ill more times than the rest of the family combined. Wiktor often wondered if she would have lived past childhood at all, if it wasn't for magical healing.

Had it been up to him, she would not have gone to the Academy at all.

The argument that resulted from that was not pretty. It was the only time Cecylia had ever accused him of anything, let alone of being a 'humongous hypocrite': Wiktor had achieved his successful military career with the support of the family, yet he had attempted to confine her options while expecting other parents to give up their children for the interests of the state.

That episode with his 'baby girl' had left him sulking in a dark corner of his estate for hours...

In fact, it was still depressing to think about.

Wiktor had relented in the end. Then one thing had led to another and now, here he was, standing on the fortified walls of Nordkreuz while she risked life and limb behind enemy lines.

So much for parents protecting their child, he thought.

The only help he could offer her was to perform as his duty calls: strive to bring this war to a swift and decisive end.

Therefore, instead of praying, Wiktor had busied himself managing more materialistic tasks -- like making sure every commoner who answered the call-to-arms had fresh winter coats, pants, and socks.

There were some who scoffed at such trivialities, mocking him as the 'Accountant General'. Wiktor replied by asking them how their men were supposed to win battles with their stomaches empty, their toes frostbitten, and their lips sealed by frozen snot.

Now, such logistical work paid its dividends. Tens of thousands of men have been standing outside in the blizzard, some exposed for over an hour already. They might be cold and miserable, but he could at least be confident that none were freezing to death.

The moment General Wiktor von Falkenhausen received news that a smaller Skagen force numbering over fifteen hundred pushed ahead of their main army, he had sent orders for every camp in Nordkreuz to rally. Tactically, he couldn't think of any reason to send a small, advanced ground force to a fortified city, which meant that detachment was most likely the skywhale battlegroup.

There was only a short window of opportunity to bombard Nordkreuz before the Knights Phantom could return.

Wiktor had sent the civilians to basement cellars and the most of the infantry out into the empty fields. From there over forty thousand soldiers would wait out the bombardment, their presence concealed by illusory snow-covered hills.

The city itself? Only a local garrison of three thousand manned its fortifications, plus another thousand magic-capable officers he had stripped from the army units. King Leopold and his Black Eagles also remained inside the city as a symbol of faith; though the Garrison Headquarters building he stayed at was the most heavily-warded structure within the city.

The King was brave, not stupid.

Unlike less composed rulers, he also didn't demand a sortie to meet the enemy head on. Without aerial combat training and amidst a blizzard, sending infantry spellswords up into the air would merely be presenting the enemy with easy targets -- thousands of targets who could shoot back, but targets nonetheless.

Manpower had always been one of Weichsel's strategic weaknesses. There was no point to winning one battle, or even one war, only to leave themselves easy prey for an ambitious neighbor.

"DRAKES SIGHTED! INCOMING!"

The shout came from one of the observers who also stood atop the East Gatehouse. Unfortunately, even with Snow Sight, it was hard to pinpoint drakes in the middle of a raging blizzard. His third word indicated that they were already unleashing their payloads.

"RAISE WARDS! LAUNCH SEEKERS! SIGNAL ALL UNITS TO FIRE AT WILL!" The General yelled over the howling winds.

"Solar Burst"

Two of the signalers were the first to act as they fired rays high up into the air and straight towards the riders. Had it not been for the snowstorm, the glaring red-orange light that soon erupted would have blinded anyone who delayed covering their eyes.

...Or in the case of the gatehouse officers: if they hadn't put on their orange-tinged goggles in time.

Nevertheless, Wiktor could still feel his face tingle irritatingly as the light washed over him. Dhampirs were severely allergic to sunlight, or any magic that imitated it. Had it not been for the Sunward spells they used every day, his skin would have sizzled, cracked, and turned to crisp right there.

Even with it, his face still felt hot and raw, as though from a harsh sunburn.

But there was no time for healing such trivial wounds...

Through the heavy snow, Wiktor soon noticed another hazy glare of light coming from the west -- in the direction of the Garrison Headquarters.

The King's position in center city was also under attack.

Meanwhile, his own mages had started adding layers of defensive screens and autonomous shields above them. The remaining spellcasters, himself included, reached out their gloves in all four directions and began firing off swarms of Ether Seekers.

Dozens of multicolored lights quickly turned into hundreds as they shot up into the skies in a nonstop torrent of spellfire.

The gatehouse had been turned into a bastion of anti-air interdiction fire, and it wasn't the only one.

The General had stripped over a thousand mages from the assembled army and reorganized them into units of twenty-five each. He had placed them atop the most sturdy buildings in Nordkreuz, with orders to pour counterspells into the skies en masse unless a drake actually moved in to engage them. At the same time, the assigned defensive casters of each group would dedicate themselves to protecting the rest from overhead bombardment.

If it wasn't for the vision-obscuring blizzard, dozens of rooftops spraying thousands upon thousands of glowing projectiles skyward would have made a stunning light show.

But today, the act was only beginning.

Ether Seeker was a simple, independent spell that relied on numbers over precision. As a 'cast and forget' type of spell, it was capable of autonomously hunting multiple incoming sources of ether -- so long as they weren't other Ether Seekers. They disrupted en-route spells by interdicting them with unstable, foreign ether. However, their ability to find targets was limited by proximity, which made it important for them to cross paths with hostile spells.

In this blizzard, merely spotting the fist-sized falling rocks those drakes dumped against ground targets was hard enough. Discerning their trajectory in the howling winds? Impossible.

Had anyone been keeping track, it was likely that the defenders of Nordkreuz would score a new record tonight -- the lowest accuracy ever in massed Ether Seeker use.

As the General and his men continued to launch one salvo after another, many of them fired half-blindly, the first batch of falling runestones finally struck ground.

The very first rock actually hit a tavern just inside the gate. It disintegrated a hole through the roof, fell through, and exploded into fiery pellets that set the entire second floor hallway ablaze.

Such munitions fell from the skies in scattered droves, blanketing entire building blocks at a time with explosions. Their detonations ensued in such rapid succession that it was impossible to tell them apart. The erupting thunder of dozens or even hundreds blended together, forming a cacophony of destruction that stifled even the howling winds.

The layered wards over the gatehouse had not been spared either as ether flashed and discharged against them. Dozens of spellshields and protective screens were torn asunder in the blink of an eye, tearing holes through the defenses that sheltered the gatehouse platoon.

Those standing near the northern battlements were the first to fall as runes blasted them with fire and thunder. The intense bombardment overpowered their personal wards by sheer brute force before reaping the lives of men.

Yet that was merely the beginning...

One of the un-shrunken barrels crashed into a battered spellshield overhead, spilling their contents into a volatile mixture of airborne liquids. Two individually-stable alchemical compounds soon mixed together and reacted with the air. Combustion was nearly instantaneous, transforming it into a falling carpet of rimefire that burned its way through remaining wards as though consuming oil-soaked sheets.

In one moment, an entire squad had stood near the gatehouse's volley-fire springal, lead by the leader of Wiktor's bodyguards. A second later, they were but shrieking humanoid shapes of burning flesh, collapsing amidst a pool of flames in the very vision of hell.

Not even a seasoned officer could witness such calamity and remain unshaken. The General almost fell into shock as his remaining bodyguards shielded him while pulling him away.

...And that was when the ground trembled.

It didn't just shake and rattle; it convulsed violently. Had it not been for the blizzard, Wiktor would have seen the very streets pitch and yaw as though paved stones now rode stormy seas.

Homes wobbled and collapsed in seconds.

Stones walls snapped like twigs into crumbling segments.

Yet even amidst the carnage as the quakes swept him off his feet, the General's mind snapped back to realize his one fatal mistake:

They had been too preoccupied by the fact their enemies were led by an 'air admiral' who achieved famed through nautical glory and weather dominance.

But they had also been facing an archmage geomancer, yet nobody had fortified the city against seismic attacks. All the defensive preparations had focused on reinforcing roofs, not beams and pillars.

Now the urban districts buckled under earthquake tremors that were magnitude eight at least, possibly even nine...

His plans might have spared the army, but what of the City of Nordkreuz? The transit junction and trade center of Northern Hyperion?

Wiktor von Falkenhausen feared if there would even be a city to look upon once the weather cleared.

Then, as though the situation wasn't bad enough, the gatehouse itself collapsed under all the damage the strain.

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