Hilda and her squadron, Shield Sarjeant Jacob Holspice’s squadron, were making their way through the D’Orc carnage outside the moat. She had specifically requested to work with her friends from a few nights back. Unfortunately, that meant that the squad had had to wait on her, although she suspected having the direct protection of a Saint of Tiernon in your squad was probably more than enough to assuage their impatience for battle. She chuckled at her own humor. She knew full well it did.
Hilda had been delayed several hours in taking to the field simply because she, Stevos, Inethya, and Timbly had been too busy fielding links and illumination streams to be able to actually go into battle. However, after a few hours, enough other avatars of all Five Siblings had finally made it to Nysegard, and so the avatars at the Citadel had been able to hand off streams.
This was going to turn out to be a big presence and in fact, a very unprecedented presence. The Siblings were not only sending archons to other locations on Nysegard; shortly before they left other saints had begun coming from their new locations on Nysegard to the Citadel. She and Stevos had worked to bring up two Saintly Gateways to other locations on Nysegard. The first saints through would set up additional gateways, while local commanders would fill them in on the status and needs for battle.
The current plan was to launch a dozen saint-led squadrons to go after the vampires and vampyrs, along with the ghasts and ghouls shielding them. One good thing had been that Orcus’s sky portal to the Isle of Doom had swathed a large section of the battlefield in atunlight, forcing the vampires, vampyrs and other daylight-sensitive Unlife to try to seek shelter and save themselves, and so kept them from battle.
Now that night had come to the Isle of Doom, and the portal was closed, the vampires and their forces would be out in force, and the ghasts and ghouls who had been left in some disarray by the atunlight would be far more organized and dangerous. Which was fine; the portal had bought them the time needed to get the streams stabilized and new saints onto the battlefield.
A guttural screech above her made Hilda glance up quickly in surprise, only to see a very large orc zombie flying overhead. Apparently it had been batted like a ball through the sky by one of the D’Orcs to their right with their incredibly oversized weapons. She stared in awed amazement at the giant winged demons.
To think, only weeks ago they had been scrambling in fear of what these returned D’Orcs might be up to in Astlan, and today? She was wading her way through mushed zombie parts side by side with D’Orcs. Hilda shook her head, looking up to where Orcus was wrapping an extremely large pterosaur in golden chains from his Wand. If anyone had told her even two days ago that the Demon Prince Orcus would actually be leading the forces of the Five Siblings into battle, she’d have had them committed to one of the Sisters’ sanitariums.
Hilda nodded, pleased. This part of the field was mostly cleared of active combatants, but the rear guard were starting to move back in. They needed to hurry towards the vampire-led ghoul armies before they got bogged down with more zombies. Hilda frowned, trying to understand where they had gotten so many corpses to reanimate.
Suddenly there was a commotion among the mass of zombies ahead and to the right of them, separated from them by about thirty feet of mulched zombie corpses. The zombies, who had been milling around, apparently awaiting orders, now seemed to be scrambling to change positions and move out of the way of something. She had to adjust her Holy Sight, but something on the other side of the zombies was apparently causing havoc.
Whatever the commotion was, she could see various zombie limbs flying up into the air and coming back down among the still-functional zombies. It was rather similar to the havoc wreaked by the D’Orcs, but there were no D’Orcs in that area that she knew of. Whatever it was, it was below the head height of the zombies, and heading towards them.
“Alert!” Hilda told her squad, pointing to the commotion. The region was poorly lit; their principal light source was her own Holy Light, which lit them up as very obvious targets. The remainder of the illumination on the battlefield came from the Citadel’s walls some distance behind them; lightning bolts crashing down upon the D’Orc regiment about two thousand feet southwest of them; fireballs launched by various wizards; and whatever pyrotechnic display Orcus, Ashena Brightfeather or some other high-powered knight or avatar might produce in the process of battling the Unlife. The squad turned to face the commotion.
