The dragon dropped into view once more, and I watched Reid let his arrow fly. The arrow flew true, and it smashed into the dragon’s undercarriage with a thump that echoed across the battlefield.
Unfortunately, that was all it did. The woman atop the dragon gave a sudden scream as she was jostled to the side, but otherwise the dragon recovered almost immediately, and her saddle prevented her from falling. Unharmed and livid, the dragon began searching for the source of the arrow.
The woman aboard it no longer looked quite so excited as the dragon found Reid and began to dive.
Reid yelped, shocked that his bow hadn’t managed to do anything more than push the beast, and now he was the dragon’s primary target.
I kicked the horse into motion at a full gallop. The dragon’s eyes were laser-focused on Reid, and I desperately needed to get to him before the monster cooked him alive.
Fortunately, a warrior leaped high enough to attack the low-flying dragon and smashed an axe into its massive neck before falling back to Earth. It didn’t even pierce the scales, but it did do enough to distract the dragon.
There were quite a few soldiers who had devoted many of their free points to the jumping skill, specifically to fight these dragons and other flying rift monsters. Magic became less and less effective the further it was from the caster, and so the ability to reach the flying monsters was highly prized.
The dragonrider didn’t remain idle as she tossed another packet straight at the falling soldier, and the three others that had leaped up after him.
The axe-wielder fell faster than the packet, but just like before, the soldiers assumed it was some type of trap or magic and attacked it immediately.
“Mages only!” I screamed. “Burn it to a crisp!”
My warning was either too late or too far to be heard. One of the rising soldiers sliced the packet to ribbons and was shocked as it exploded into powder that rained down over everyone below.
Two more soldiers had been higher in the air, and they managed to slice at the dragon, both harmlessly clipping its tail before it flew off to circle its target. The one covered in powder seemed to lose all control of his jump and began to fall back to the earth without even managing to strike, tumbling end over end.
I turned away, just in time to dodge my horse around a panicking soldier, just barely avoiding trampling him.
I’d been dangerously close to the area beneath that encounter, and getting out was my highest priority. I had to hope I was outside the radius and that my new seventy-eight points in Chemical Resillience were enough to protect me if I wasn’t. I’d be useless if that damn poison turned me into an idiot again.
Reid’s aim with my bow was almost unbelievable, but he was missing the obvious. I reached him and slowed the horse down, shouting as loud as I could.
“Reid!” I screamed.
“Mera!? Gods, what are you doing here!? You have to get–!”
“The pepper paste!” I shouted, interrupting him.
“What?”
“Coat your damn arrows in the pepper paste and shoot that dragon in the nose! This bitch wants to use chemical warfare? Let’s give her a taste of her own medicine!”
Reid’s jaw fell open for a moment before he turned and dashed back towards the wagon, cursing himself. “Stupid, stupid! I should’ve thought of that!”
Enough arrows could bring down a dragon. I knew they could. It was a damn saying, and my uncle had told me he’d seen it done. Though there had also been a hefty amount of magic and plenty of physical attacks as well.
Large as this brigade felt to me, it was no army. Even without the threat of the trolls and goblins attacking on the ground, it would take hundreds of soldiers to bring down a dragon. Either that or someone with truly impressive magic. A single arrow, even from Reid’s Bow, wasn’t going to cut it unless he hit somewhere vulnerable. Making that vulnerable opening was usually the job of melee combatants like the soldiers with the high jump ability.
They weren’t aiming for a kill. They were just trying to cut open a gap in the creature’s diamond-hard scales.
I watched another soldier leap into the air, but this one was caught by a swipe of the dragon’s massive talon. His armor seemed to part like butter as the talon casually cleaved through clothes and skin alike. From that height, I couldn’t even hear the scream as multiple pieces of a body that had once been a person fell to the ground in a spray of blood.
Pepper Paste didn’t need any of that. It just needed to get near the bastard’s smoking nostrils. I had to hope that the dragon wasn’t resistant to it like the goblins seemed to be, but even if he was, I thought it still might keep the damn thing off the battlefield long enough for the soldiers to clean up the goblins and trolls.
To my surprise, the woman was jerking on what appeared to be reigns same as a horse, and the dragon was listening to her, rising back up to the clouds, even though it clearly wanted to kill Reid. Wise for her. She could just drop those packets all day, and soon enough, we’d all be too dumb to do anything about the murderous rift monsters.
How many of the drug packs could she have up there? They were large leather bundles and probably heavy. She’d dropped two of them already, and sure enough, almost everyone beneath the area was lying around dazedly, putting up no resistance as the occasional troll or goblin broke through and began to slaughter them like helpless sheep.
“If this doesn’t work, you need to give your bow to someone who already has a ridiculously high archery skill,” I told Reid the moment I caught up to him. He had climbed on top of the wagon and unscrewed one of the paste barrels. His eyes were tear-streaked, and he kept wiping at his face, as the pepper paste began to work on him by sheer proximity.
Oddly, I felt almost none of the usual nausea and congestion that had become almost routine from being this close to the paste. It took me a moment to realize the Chemical Resilience skill was helping there.
In kinder circumstances, I might’ve regretted the waste of stat points but in retrospect, we were in a war against someone whose last leader had called themselves a “Chemist.” This should’ve been anticipated.
He nodded. His bow tripled the user's effective archery stat. Reid’s archery was respectable in the nineties, but if someone with a natural hundred and fifty were to take his bow, the arrows might be able to pierce the fucking moon.
Maybe. This was all guesswork. His current stat was effectively at or near three hundred, and that already sounded unbelievable to me. The fact that it hadn’t pierced the dragon’s scales was genuinely shocking, but I didn’t really know how the archery skill worked. Increasing it might do nothing more than improve the accuracy.
Something about Reid’s bow certainly seemed to lend extra impact, as if it added the impact of a hammer at the end of each arrow. Fantastic for killing trolls, but not enough to do more than destabilize a dragon.
I’d galloped for almost a full minute, taking me far away from the front line, but I could still see battles creeping closer. The trolls were not being beaten back. They were breaking through.
“Dad? Where the hell is Dad?” I thought while I watched Reid dunk four or five arrows in the barrel.
“Oh gods, Mera, I don’t know if I can hit anything with this! It’s making my eyes tear up!” he shouted.
The dragon roared again, but it was more distant this time. It descended and once again flew low, raking its fiery breath near the front lines while soldiers leaped to chip at its scales and arrows flew past it, most missing it entirely. Mages held back, wary of hitting their vulnerable allies as he notched an arrow.
Reid fired, but the shot flew wide, slicing past the dragon with a thunderous crack.
Lightning suddenly burst from the clouds, lancing to strike at the dragon. It struck the creature, but was as ineffective as Reid’s arrow had been. I was hopeful that the electricity might’ve still killed the rider, but there was no such luck. She was insulated somehow, either by her talent or something she’d made.
“She’s culling us,” I thought, horrified, as I saw her toss another packet off the side of the dragon and down into a frenzy of whirling blades and claws. The poison was even more effective than the fire had been as mages and soldiers alike succumbed to its effects only to be immediately cut down by trolls.
“Uhh, Mera!” Reid called, pointing.
I turned and was horrified to see three trolls fighting a single woman. Oxana! The girl looked terrified, but she was dodging and allowing the massive trolls to attack one another as much as her. She was a tall woman, but compared to the trolls she looked downright tiny.
More of them were surging around her, heading straight towards us.
I growled. This was the third time I’d witnessed these fucking monsters heading towards me, and I was fucking tired of it. I trotted my horse over toward the wagon.
“Can you dip your spear in the paste and throw it to me!? I’ll keep you safe! You just take down that fucking dragon!”
“Mera! You can barely breathe with this stuff near your face!” he cried, through snotty tears. His eyes and nose were both leaking. It was disgusting.
“I’ll be fine!” I told him. “I’m immune, but the trolls aren’t! I can keep you safe from them while you finish that dragon! Or at least kill the bitch on top of it! I bet she’s not nearly as safe from your arrows as the dragon is!”
The area was mostly devoid of people. None of the soldiers assigned to the wagon with us had stuck around, either fleeing back up the road toward Mitoras, or into the trees where they could be marginally protected from the dragon.
“You’d… better not fucking die, Mera. God dammit, we should never have joined. We should’ve run the moment we heard about this draft!” he cried.
“Maybe!” I called. “But we’re here now!”
“Kill some fucking trolls then,” he said, wiping his face for a third time while handing me his spear.
“You too,” I replied, before kicking the horse into a gallop.
I should be running, but Oxana was fighting three trolls on her own. Even if I couldn’t help at all, the least I could do was get her out of harm’s way. Reid’s bow was the only thing that had even made a dent in that dragon so far.
In the distance, I watched a man’s hammer expand. Once, twice, three times, until the hammer was the size of a house. The man brought the hammer down on a group of trolls and an ogre with the force of a meteor and the ground shook as the hammer evaporated.
Different talents were activating all over the battlefield. Most were mundane. Improvements to accuracy, speed, or strength that resulted in extra free points when used as intended. Some people got strange ones.
I saw an ethereal blue owl made of wind swooping around the battlefield, plucking out goblins' eyes with razor-sharp talons. From my vantage atop the horse, I saw other horse riders who surrounded their mounts with golden energy before plowing through ogres three times their size. Arrows that multiplied in mid-air, floating swords and daggers, and beams of white-hot fire joined the cacophony of magic as soldiers desperately tried to stem the oncoming tide of riftspawn.
The horseman died when a lucky ogre’s club smashed him off the side of his mount. Goblin’s teeth chewed into the suddenly vulnerable horseflesh as man and mount both died before they could scream.
I turned away, feeling sick to my stomach. I had to do what I could, for who I could.
I arrived near the trolls in record time and immediately stabbed the troll with my spear, aiming for the neck. I struck true as I rode on by, but the spear shoved me back in the saddle before even hurting the troll, bruising the hell out of my arm and slamming into my shoulder.
Their skin was tough as steel, and I was no more capable of penetrating it now than I had been during that first attack in Pemolar when I’d tried to hit one with an iron poker.
It didn’t matter, though. I’d gotten close enough. The glob of paste on the spear tip smeared all over the creature’s neck. I was pretty sure I’d sprained my shoulder, trying to stab the monster on horseback, but it immediately tried to wipe the paste away and smeared it all over its own face.
It began to howl.
Oxana realized what had happened and placed herself between the incapacitated troll and its two siblings. The two trolls tried to throw the third one out of their way, but it stood its ground and swiped blindly at the other two, snarling with its shark-like teeth.
Oxana took the opportunity to throw a knife at one of the trolls’ faces. It smacked uselessly into the monster’s cheek and bounced off, missing the eye she’d been aiming for. Was that the knife I’d made her?
I wheeled around, determined this time to try to just slap the troll in the face. The gunk was much more effective than any amount of stabbing I could manage. To my surprise, I didn’t need to, as the three trolls began an all-out brawl amongst themselves, forgetting Oxana entirely.
Oxana backed away, and I took the opportunity to abort my charge as well. I veered around the brawling trolls and reached her as she backed away towards Reid and the wagons.
“Mera! Gods, am I glad to see you!” she called.
My eyes widened in horror as I spotted a lone goblin creeping up on her.
I screamed a warning, pointing, but before she could manage to turn around, Teskin leaped out from behind a wagon and kicked the monster so hard that it flew a few feet back, its neck broken.
He landed smoothly and gracefully, but his eyes were filled with concern for Oxana.
I was certainly glad to see his new knee bracers being put to good use.