Mike’s life had been through quite a few changes recently. If anyone had told him that he would be putting his life on the line for the sake of the city under the orders of a noble who’d he’d personally sworn his entire life to, he would probably have laughed his ass off… right before plotting to rob and kill the insulting bastard. Yet, here he was.

  Keeping his head down out of reflex rather than necessity every time a kobald spell exploded onto the shield above him, he stared wide-eyed at the kobald wall. Trying his best to keep his growing terror from overwhelming him, he maintained his quick march alongside his fellow wackos. Many of them were looking to him for reassurance, since somehow he’d become something of a leader for those who Lord Walker had offered redemption.

  His fellow wackos had come from all walks of life. Some were former hunters with a criminal bent like him, others were guilty of more mundane crimes like tax evasion and robbery. There were even a few murderers and true social outcasts among them. But, everyone of them had pledged to follow Lord Walker seeking their own form of redemption. They marched right alongside former guards and soldiers without shame.

  They were now ‘adventurers’, a term which was slowly gaining new meaning as Lord Walker’s teachings continued. Much more than a job or a title, it was a way of life… a path forward.

  Even in the few days since they’d pledged, Mike knew that they had all seen growth in their identity.

  Under the protection of the shield above his head, he tried to focus on how far he’d come, reassuring himself that following Lord Walker was the right choice. He had to. After all, there was no way out. Running off on his own wasn’t an option. If he did, he’d be cut down the moment he was out from under the shields.

  Looking over his shoulder, he could see the mages that were currently maintaining the shield over the section of the formation he was in. They looked like they were barely holding on. Sweat poured down their faces while their expressions made it clear they were in pain. There was nothing he could do to help.

  Lord Walker’s words of wisdom echoed through his mind. ‘Trust in the men and women fighting alongside you. They are there to protect you just as you are there to protect them. Focus on yourself and what you can do, and leave the rest up to them’.

  As one of the team leaders, he was connected to the command channel Blackwood was maintaining. He could hear the team leaders from the mages reporting their imminent failure to keep up with the kobald’s assault.

  “We’re almost there! Just hold on! Once we’re through the gate, we’ll be fine! Just hold!” ordered Knight Angleton, his tone offering no question that they would succeed.

  Tightening his grip on his sword, he gritted his teeth and pushed forward. They were almost there. Once inside, they could begin their counterattack. The kobalds would break. It would be hard, but they could do it. They would succeed.

  Seeing the wall approaching, he felt the entire formation speed up. Panting heavily in excitement, he tried to keep his heart from racing. His turn was coming, and he had to be ready.

  Glancing over at the head of their charge, he saw Knight Angleton and the other Wackos who had breaching abilities preparing themselves. Multicolored essence constructs manifested in front of them, each one feeling more dangerous than the last. In the center, Knight Angelton’s golden shield looked like a battering ram.

  Time seemed to slow down as they slammed into the gate. The explosion of force was enough to rattle his bones and shake his footing, causing him to stumble. He wasn’t the only one, as he could feel the pressure from behind him pushing him forward into the back of the Wacko in front of him.

  Regaining his equilibrium, he looked over in horror to see the gate still standing. It looked utterly unharmed… as if it had no trouble stopping the best of what Knight Angelton and the breaching team could do. Mocking them for their inability to affect it. For a moment, his mind refused to accept what he was seeing. It just wasn’t possible.

  “Spread out along the wall! Cut off the angle of fire!” someone shouted over the command channel in panic.

  Mindlessly following along with the crowd, he stumbled forward under the protection of the shield above him.

  ‘They failed…’ he admitted to himself in confusion, before reluctantly accepting that they were all probably going to die.

  With all their mages occupied, their ability to counterattack was nonexistent. Without getting through that gate, they couldn’t do anything. It was hopeless. The kobalds would wear them down until their shield failed and their losses began piling up.

  Clinging to his fellow Wackos along the wall, he felt his heart break as he watched them all come to the same realization that he just did. The fear of death that they’d been holding back was overcoming them. He could see it in their eyes, they were giving up.

  He was too. He could feel it. He would die here.

  Locking eyes with a woman named Nora Falkner, who was one of Lord Walker’s earliest adherents, he was surprised to see her looking calm and resolute in the face of their doom. She didn’t look worried at all.

  Meeting his eyes, she muttered quietly, “Lord Walker once said, ‘Reality is what you make it’. We’re not going to die, we’re going to win. I don’t know how, but I believe it to be true. Lord Walker will show us the way forward.”

  Something in his center stirred as he felt his resolve building. It was crazy to think that they’d succeed but hadn’t his lord said that all adventurers were crazy.

  From behind him, he heard shouts of excitement and the sounds of battle ringing out. Snapping his head around as best he could with all the people pressed against him, he dropped his jaw in shock at the sight of a massive opening in the wall that hadn’t been there before. It looked like a perfectly carved gate… without a door.

  “Lord Walker has opened a way through! The first teams inside get up on that wall and eliminate those casters! Melee fighters to the front!” a team leader’s voice he didn’t recognize erupted over the command channel.

  In awe, he promised himself that he would never doubt The Walker again.

  —--

  Perhaps it was the fact that an entire section of the wall had vanished into the ether, or that humans had appeared out of nowhere, Nero wasn’t sure and he didn’t care. Whatever the cause of the kobald’s paralyzing confusion, he planned to take full advantage of it.

  Without the need to maintain a communications link or any spells, he only needed to split his mind enough to maintain his mage armor while the majority of his attention remained on the fighting. He could fuel his shield with the souls of the kobalds he killed, or at least he hoped he could.

  He was already in mid-leap before he started his roar. Coming down on the kobald closest to him, Nero stabbed it through its stupid lizard-skinned snout face ensuring the quickest death possible. Before it even realized it was dead, he was already slashing at another kobald’s throat while shield-bashing the one standing next to it.

  Behind him, he could feel the rising tide of emotion coming from the Wackos. It was a feeling of jubilation and wrath incarnate. Whatever terror and doom they’d felt was vanishing like fog in the morning sun, leaving nothing but an overwhelming belief in their impending victory. It was intoxicating.

  Still in the grip of his first war-cry, Nero spun on his heels to block a poorly supported spear that was trying to stab him.

  Looking into the kobald’s eyes, Nero could see that it was both terrified and confused. It had no idea what was happening and was merely reacting on instinct. There was none of the madness and rage he was used to seeing when it stared at him. It could be because it wasn’t a clone, or just due to the fact that it couldn’t comprehend how Nero had appeared.

  Either way, Nero didn’t waste any time worrying about it and summarily executed it with a wave of his essence infused blade removing its head.

  All around him, more and more Wackos poured out of the opening behind him, overrunning the unprepared kobalds in a tide of death. Nero felt his small frame being quickly overtaken by the warriors charging through the kobald lines like a wrecking ball. He had thought his assault had been impressive, but it was nothing compared to what the rest of the Wackos were capable of.

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  Abilities flashed left and right, reaping kobald lives by the dozens. The Wackos themselves held together in the loosest of formations, each one more interested in cutting down their enemies than maintaining their fighting lines.

  It was a bloodbath.

  While he’d liked to have joined in on the fighting, he knew he’d be more effective if he could get his casting working.

  Pausing for a moment, Nero reached out with his senses to check on the accumulating soul stuff. He wasn’t sure if he needed to wait for soul death, or how the process even worked.

  Standing there in the middle of the battle while more and more Wackos ran past him, Nero watched as the first kobald he killed began his journey into whatever afterlife they believed in. Like he’d expected, the kobalds soul remained ‘nearby’ hovering in the ether. It was both overlaid with the body in its chest, but also moving further away in the ether. If he had to describe what he was seeing, he knew he’d struggle as he didn’t have the vocabulary to put words to it.

  The closest thing he could think of was that the soul was that the ether had more than three dimensions. The soul wasn’t moving up or down, but ‘deeper’ into the ether. And the further it got, the more soul stuff bled off it, coagulating into a ball of potential that was clinging to the ether, unable to follow it.

  Now having a new perspective as to what was happening, Nero realized his ability to see the ether was limited to the ‘layer’ he was focusing on. That’s what he was doing when he flexed his ability, he was moving higher and lower in the ether, and in the furthest recesses was the wall he’d seen where the souls breached the different planes.

  Just trying to wrap his head around the geometry of the ether was enough to make him lightheaded.

  Putting the spiritual implications aside for the moment, Nero focused instead on the soul stuff accumulating in front of him. He needed to know if he could use it. His working theory was that dedicated soul stuff would be out of his reach, but a soul that died without dedicating itself to a purpose was hopefully still up for grabs.

  Reaching out with his senses, he tentatively poked the soul stuff to see how it reacted. Sighing in relief, all he felt was confusion rolling off of it in waves. Having learned that the soul stuff still had something of an identity, he carefully prodded it to see how he might be able to use it. The kobald it had come from had died without understanding what had happened. It had been too stupid to comprehend how a human teen popped up out of nowhere and stabbed it in the face.

  He took a few seconds to watch it grow as the kobald’s soul which spawned it got further and further away into the ether. Feeling like a scientist conducting an experiment to see what would happen, he ripped it out of its connection with the soul and dragged its potential into his mage shield. The moment he did, he could feel the defensive identity of his shield growing stronger. It went from being a struggle to maintain it to a solid defense that could probably stop a spear without affecting him. Whatever was left of the kobald’s identity had no problem being given a new purpose for its potential.

  He’d known soul stuff was powerful, but holy hell was it a big difference.

  Glancing back at the kobalds body, he saw that more soul stuff was already accumulating as its soul continued on its journey. For a brief moment, he wondered what would happen if he resuscitated it… would it lose levels or growth? Where was all this extra potential being stored?

  Feeling himself being jostled by a Wacko running by him, Nero snapped out of his trance.

  Blinking a few times to resettle his focus back in his body, he looked around to see a distinctly different sight than what he’d seen before he’d closed his eyes. Looking up behind him, he could see Wackos moving in groups to take over the top of the wall. They were mercilessly cutting down the kobald casters, having no trouble handling them in small numbers.

  More than once, he saw kobald spells splashing harmlessly against their essence shields, their ability to cause harm on their own not enough to overcome the Wacko’s level advantage. Apparently, even kobald casters were only dangerous in groups.

  But not everything was going their way, as he could see healers and mages working together to create a temporary safe space near the opening to collect the wounded and dead. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there in the middle of the pile of kobalds staring at the ether, but it had been long enough for people to have begun dying. Luckily, the healers were on it, and Wackos were already being brought back.

  Turning back to the battle, Nero saw that chaos was currently reigning in the kobald encampment. Throughout the area around him, Wackos were knocking down kobald mud huts and ripping through poorly organized groups of kobalds that were trying to organize a coordinated defense. Off in the distance, he could see larger buildings which were probably housing more of the kobald upper castes. They looked like giant rounded mudballs with holes in them for kobalds to look out of. There were firepits and torches all over the place for light, but the overall aesthetic was drab as everything was made out of earth. But, further past all that, he could see the throne room doors reaching up to the ceiling. They must have required teams to open them. Even from the distance he was at, he could see that they were intricately carved and plated in gold. They looked old, and out of place in stark contrast to the kobald earthen architecture.

  The kobalds had done a hell of a job defiling the place.

  Realizing that he was no longer under a mage shield, Nero frowned in confusion for a moment as he wasn’t being pelted with spells. He was surprised to see the kobald casters hesitating to fire spells at him. Running his eyes along the top of the wall, he could see that they were too busy trying to stay alive than casting anything. The Wackos were running them down in short order.

  The kobalds had bet everything on their wall, and now they were paying the price for its failure to stop them.

  Using a quick spell form to raise himself up onto a pillar, Nero began collecting what soul stuff he could to charge a few spell shells. Off in the distance, he could see the kobalds beginning to organize a counterattack, and he felt like he should disabuse them of that notion.

  Interestingly, he could tell that a great deal of the soul stuff was still out of his control. If he looked closely, he could see that many of the souls had left an imprint of hatred toward humanity and a desire to be used against them.

  ‘They must be the souls of actual kobalds and not the stupid clones,’ he thought to himself.

  The only conclusion he could come to was that the kobald clones were specifically designed to be the perfect sacrifices. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there weren’t too many free human souls floating around for him to make a comparison. It was entirely likely that the soul stuff he’d previously used from humans only worked because they also desired to strike out at the kobalds.

  He was sure he was missing a great deal about how it all worked, but he figured he was beginning to understand the gist of it. There was probably a way for soul casting to use soul stuff against its desires, but it would probably end up causing problems. Perhaps that’s why soul casting was considered so dangerous. Didn’t Nick or somebody mention something about soul magic causing ‘corruption’ or something?

  No matter, Nero had plenty of free range kobald clone soul stuff to work with.

  Standing on his pillar right in front of the newly formed hole in the wall, Nero began charging the spell forms he attached to his shoulders. Reaching out, he collapsed more essence into his collection, ensuring he had plenty of essence to work with.

  With a grin, he looked out onto the battlefield and picked his targets. From his higher vantage point, he could see where the kobalds were regrouping.

  ‘Perfect,’ he thought to himself.

  His grin widening, he began launching spell shells one after another. With the amount of soul stuff he was collecting, his shell constructs were solid enough to act like mortar shells. The kobalds hadn’t thought to set up their own shields just yet, and they were laughably unprepared for his shell’s arrival.

  One after another, the shells exploded among them in a dazzling display of carnage. His shells flew quickly, and several were in the air before the first had even landed. Kobald defenses shattered, and bodies erupted in gore reminiscent of the more historically accurate World War II movies he’d once enjoyed.

  It was glorious. The entire battlefield erupted in a cheer from the Wackos, their exuberance filling the ether with their emotions.

  Behind him, the last of the Wackos were making their way through the hole he had opened. They had successfully created a beachhead beyond the wall, and they were now digging in. But Nero could already tell it would only be temporary. They were not intending to stay there.

  As the newly healed Wackos were heading back out, Nero could hear over the command channel Harry and Cathleen calling out orders. Wiping out the kobalds wasn’t their mission, stopping the ritual in the throne room… that’s why they were here.

  Nero half listened to what they were saying as he continued to funnel soul stuff into his spell forms. Despite how many kobalds the Wackos had cut down, there wasn’t nearly enough to let him truly unleash the kind of damage he’d wanted to, but it was still enough for him to feel like he was contributing.

  Considering how spread out the Wackos were now, he was forced to carefully choose his targets. He also had to account for the few kobalds that were willing to brave the Wackos’ reprisals by firing arrows and spells at him. While being on the pillar he’d raised up provided a great firing position, it also made him stand out. If it weren’t for him constantly feeding soul stuff into his mage armor, he’d be a pin cushion by now or a block of charcoal.

  Fighting as a mage in battle was a lot more complicated than he thought it would be. There was the need to carefully pick his spell targets, having to maintain his defenses, and the constant worry that he’d run out of resources. It was no wonder that mages were predominantly responsible for shields and support. In truth, it was kind of a big pain in the ass and it made him want to just run off on his own and let loose.

  But, he kept at it. He knew he was more useful to the assault as a strategic weapon taking out kobalds in groups while waiting for opportunities. He could even serve as a beacon for the kobald’s fire while standing stupidly on his pillar like a target. While his individual kill count suffered, the overall progress of the assault was what mattered.

  As more and more kobalds retreated toward the throne room door and the larger kobald buildings, the fighting in the area began to die down.

  Before long, the Wackos were ordered to regroup so they could push forward. Nero was able to take one last look at the building in the distance before he lowered himself down to the ground.

  He was already looking forward to tearing them down.