Frostbound

Chapter 281 - By the Grace of God

Marcus

The insects had nothing on the blight-touched Orcs. Oh, they were deadly, quick, persistent, and all around not a fun time, but they weren't endless like the Orcs were. They also had the option to retreat when facing the bugs that they didn't have now.

They'd either win or lose a battle relatively quickly versus the swarm. Not this drawn-out battle ticking up there in hours. It had been at least 4 by now! That was insane!

Mana dried up. Anchors ran dry. Stamina bottomed out, yet the Orcs were still coming.

Marcus had thought at first the test wouldn't be so bad. Sure, the Orcs were level 100 but they weren't that hard to kill. The Champions had some extra oomph, but they weren't that hard. The Chieftains took a regular team working together to take down, but it wasn't...

That all went out the window in the face of the tide. The tide of battle had started at their back. High and mighty they were, but slowly, ever so slowly, the tide had shifted.

Marcus had felt it.

With every death, with every spell draining the last of a mage's mana, with every warrior collapsing having swung his last. It was a battle of attrition and they were losing.

Marcus himself nearly lost.

His glaive was visibly rusted from the mistake of leaving blood on its surface and the waters raging around him were tainted black from Orc blood. He did his best to but he could only do so much.

He nearly collapsed in euphoria when he felt the tides shifting. Instead of slowly being lost to the other side, they started to come back. A few drops of water at first, nearly imperceptible to his senses.

Then the flow intensified. Then it grew even more.

The feeling caught him so off guard that Marcus nearly lost an arm trying to find out the reason. It wasn't until the Chieftains around him thinned that he realized.

The Orcs were slowing down.

The wave was ending. The horde had run dry.

Then they came. All the momentum they had built up. The tide that had finally started to swing back in their direction was lost. Ripped away just as all sound was ripped away by the earth-shaking roars.

Marcus felt the War Leader coming for him. It was impossible not to. The vicious aura blanketed the area, causing some to back away in fear. All four directions had an enemy to deal with. There would be no help coming.

It was up to him and Chris, who he hadn't seen hide nor tail of in hours.

Marcus solemnly wished the man wasn't dead. He wasn't sure he could beat the War Leader alone. Scratch that, he was sure he couldn't beat the War Leader alone.

Not as tired and drained as he was. If he was in prime condition, maybe, but he was far from being in prime condition. Everyone was. Unless they sat back and did nothing for hours, everyone was running dry.

His Mana Pool, severely enhanced by his new Mana Cultivation, was running on empty, let alone the people who didn't even make that Step yet.

As the Chieftains thinned and their reckoning came ever closer, he finally had the mental capacity to weigh his options. He could run. Nothing said he had to die in an unwinnable battle.

He turned back and gazed over his people behind him. The little that were left. He prayed that the makeshift first-aid tents were so overrun, that seven more were hastily constructed and that was where everyone was, but he couldn't delude himself.

There were enough lifeless eyes peering back at him to know where most of his people were and it wasn't in hospitals.

No.

It wasn't vengeance that rushed through him. The sight of so many of his people dead angered him, sure, but he didn't turn back to the War Leader with vengeance in his heart.

It was resolve.

Everyone was tired. The hospitals had to be overflowing, with less than he hoped, but enough that moving them would be impossible.

If he didn't step up and face the powerful Orc, it would kill everyone here. He had to do his duty whether he wanted to or not.

The only good thing was he had time to catch his breath. No man's land, as Marcus called it, was awash with craters, pock-marks of various sizes, raging fires, and man-made ponds.

The environment was so thoroughly destroyed that getting through it was a challenge in its own right. The rain and blood-soaked ground stuck and slowed down those charging through it, the rents from battle forced detours. The siege weapon craters turned murky swimming pools had to be avoided.

He had time to lean on his glaive and gather what he could.

The din of battle had rushed by him and left his ears struggling to recover. They only picked up the rumbling thunder overhead or the sharp crack of distant lightning.

He hadn't realized there was a gap but he was grateful for it.

The walking disaster closed in which forced his tired, aching legs to move. Against all self-preservation instincts, he walked toward the domineering aura.

Far to his left, he felt another following in his footsteps. Last he heard, the Great Lakes Alliance was stationed over there, but he didn't much care about that at this point.

Not now.

Marcus noticed that his path was taking him toward where Chris once stood. He'd felt the frigid Arctic earlier in the battle from the area but it had been drowned out as the fight intensified.

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Slush coated the land. Blackened and dirty shards of ice half melted crunched underfoot as he walked. Lakes turned half frozen and a light dusting of snow coated the land. It was far from the pristine white that a fresh snowfall created. Instead, a grey and black that made it look closer to ash than fresh snow.

The snow was the least interesting. It was the bodies. Thousands of bodies. Some were only parts of bodies, the rest lost somewhere or crushed into nothingness.

Body after body blanketed the land and he began to walk on them instead of the ground itself. If there was an idea in his mind of being able to win against Chris, it was crushed now. Thoroughly the supremely.

"Marcus," a voice surprised him and he turned to see someone he hadn't expected. Not out here in no man's land at least. Her hair floated limply in the air and was more mud than hair at this point. She limped forward on her staff at nearly the same pace as himself.

"Abigail," He responded. "It's good to see you aren't dead."

He hadn't felt her approach and it wasn't because she was being stealthy. The overabundance of Water Mana in the air naturally hid her own, but there was barely enough of it left to be noticeable. Her Core was petering on fumes trying its best to replenish itself with the mana in the air.

"Have you seen Chris?" She asked laced with dread. It wasn't hard to hear the worry in her voice.

Marcus shook his head, "No, only his handiwork." He motioned at all the bodies and ice. "Is anyone else coming?"

The War Leader, while slowed by the terrain, was still closing in. He didn't know all of their family, but he knew they were powerful. He'd fought with Austin before and was surprised to not see him swaggering up to help.

He saw and felt only Abigail.

"No," she breathed sadly, "Austin collapsed when the Orcs stopped. Healers are looking at him but he won't be here for that." Her hand listlessly waved in the direction of what was coming. "Everyone else is either dead or collapsed."

Her voice was emotionless. Too far gone to care and that was saying something. The woman who had talked his ear off about those she cared about couldn't muster up the words.

She spoke of dead family members like it was the weather.

"Your husband?" Marcus questioned and hoped... He'd met the man before and had grown to like him.

"Alive," she answered firmly. "I made sure of it."

They'd stopped to talk and recover which allowed the presence he felt trailing him to catch up. Both turned to take in the newcomer. Or newcomers, he should say.

"Is this it?" The newcomer voiced tiredly, "The five of us against that."

The speaker was a man Marcus barely recognized. The older gentleman from the meeting looked war-torn and covered in muck, blood, and other viscera. Patrick Staffords, if he remembered correctly, Leader of the Great Lakes Alliance.

At his back were two others both with wild flaring auras that were nearly a match for Marcus's own. Patrick carried an axe in either hand while the two behind him, a man and a woman, both carried staves.

The thin covering of Water was the only thing keeping the axes free of the corrosive blood, the same trick Marcus used with his glaive. He'd learned quickly his weapon would be lost if he didn't cover it.

A group of five from all over the land stood together. It was poetic in a way Marcus dismissed as irrelevant.

"Six," the woman interrupted, "There's another further ahead."

"Further ahead?" Patrick asked incredulously, "What madman would be that deep?"

Chris still lives. A weight slightly lifted hearing that and he wasn't the only one to feel it. Abigail's relief was audible at hearing there was another person further ahead.

A hammer clanged in his mind and he gathered his wits. Now wasn't the time for this. "You and I are the front line. The man up ahead is also a warrior so he will be the third." He gestured to Patrick and himself, "You three will be the backline. I'm assuming you two are mages." He pointed at the two behind Patrick.

The aura was nearing and all of them felt it. They knew there wasn't time to discuss anything more than that and grimly nodded.

It wasn't until the woman spoke again that his plans started falling apart, "The man isn't retreating." There wasn't any worry or fear in her voice. Only a statement of fact. Apathy after seeing so many die.

Chris, you fool! Does he think he can face it alone?! After all this?!

If Abigail had more strength in her legs, Marcus would've said she shot off toward the fight but it was more of a languished sprint.

Seeing her break off, Marcus ran off after her and the three they left behind were left to wonder what was going on. "What the he-"

His words petered out as Marcus ran but he called back, "Six is better than five, come on."

He didn't have the time to explain the nuance. That Abigail was going to her brother no matter what and he was forced to follow. He could only hope they were pragmatic enough to see that following was in their best interest.

Thankfully, they were and he felt them rush after them.

Marcus followed Abigail through the bodies. The piles and piles of bodies. The ice and snow. The frosty fog. The frozen craters of water. And the bodies. So many bodies.

The air chilled as they neared and the water he had brought with him threatened to freeze.

The force wasn't strong and trivial to fight off, but the fact it was there was surprising.

The scene he came running up to made him stop dead. Abigail had run ahead without hesitation but he had to stop. It was too much to take in.

The trio caught up to him quickly and had the same reaction. Pausing next to him and looking on with a mix of emotions.

"By the grace of..." He heard one of them mutter and it wasn't far off from how he felt.

It was pure, unaltered carnage. The bodies had built and put the sea they had run through to shame. There were mountains of them. It felt like there were more lying dead or dying in this one area than his entire section combined.

In the center of the carnage stood a man. The Ice Marcus had seen him start the battle with was gone. The hammer he had once held missing. The glistening plate armor he once wore that made Marcus's own feel inadequate, hung from his battered form from fraying straps and torn leather.

The metal was bent, punctured, torn, or sheered off completely. His upper half was bare. The once thick plate lost in the battle. His helmet was gone. The only evidence that he had worn the once-resplendent suit of armor in the first place was one of the pauldrons hanging by his feet and a few plates on his legs.

Everything else was lost.

His body was riddled with black wounds. Angry and festering from the vileness the Orcs once had. The bleeding was constrained by thin flakes of ice but not completely. The infection barred the ice from closing them. Deep purple blood leaked from him and dripped to the ground.

His hands were frosted over and steaming. The thick layers of blood on both his arms extended to his elbows.

Out in front of where the man stood, was the most powerful Orc Marcus had ever laid eyes on. It towered over Chris and was nearly double the man's height. Its muscles were flared and bulging.

In one hand was a club wrought from what looked like the trunk of a tree ripped from the ground and the other held a mighty axe nearly as tall as Marcus. Its bearded blade gleamed in the rare ray of sunlight. It was the most metal he had seen an Orc carry.

The War Leader struck fear into his heart. Even from a distance and without being the focus of its attention, Marcus felt the crippling fangs of Fear build in his head.

The two mages on his side instinctively took a step back. Only he and Patrick faced the raw power and fury without faltering but he sure wanted to.

The Orc stood a distance away and stopped, taking in those who stood against it. It eyed them all and when the yellowing eyes landed on him, the urge to back away intensified tenfold.

Marcus was struck silent.

"RROAARRRR!" The ear-splitting roar was so much worse in person. It drilled into his brain and threatened to overwhelm him. Fear was an emotion that couldn't even convey the magnitude anymore. It was more Primal than that.

Primal Fear, if such a thing was enough.

His chest caught and his breath froze. His brain struggled to shake off the effect and he could only stand there frozen.

The sheer shock of what happened next jolted him awake. Like someone had taken a defibrillator to his chest.

"ROAARRR!"

It was nonsensical. It was bewildering. Incredulous.

Chris roared back. Words weren't enough to convey the raw emotion contained in the roar. One so much weaker than the Orc's but held something deeper.

It had challenged and Chris answered back. Somehow, even though he hadn't used words, Marcus understood. The deeper meaning was clear to all who heard it.

Come at me!