Dawn

Hearthglen – Northwestern Gate

Uther slammed his war hammer down on yet another ghoul, driving it into the cobblestone street, shattering its teeth. He stepped back from the corpse to survey the field of battle to see where he was needed next. The answer was everywhere. The town had four gates, though thankfully, the undead were only assaulting three of them. They still had the fourth gate open to the southeast if they needed to retreat, not that he thought they would get very far if they did; he only had two mounted knights while the rest of his troops were on foot.

“If we survive, I need to get myself another warhorse.” He muttered as he rushed to another position that was starting to be overrun. 

“You’re just getting out of shape. Hell, I have been out of the service for four years, and I am still keeping up with you. I swear, they don’t make knights like they used to.” Gerard teased while jogging beside him, the older man panting just as hard as he was. 

“I am beginning to remember why I never checked in on you all these years. How is it that the rest of Lordaeron nearly worships me, but you are always so disrespectful?” He asked, readying to cast his resurrection spell as he approached a couple of fallen footmen.

“The same reason why you always came to my men and me whenever you needed something done, or something acquired, with no questions asked.” He replied, slamming his wicked looking axe into a skeleton, shattering it to pieces. “Because you knew whatever you asked of my men and me, no matter how ridiculous, it would get done. I think I’ve earned the right to talk to you however I wish.”

“Your men? Did you not fall under…” Uther began to say, but hesitated. They had fallen under a rather underwhelming nobleman.

“Yeah, and how did that work out for him? I had to cover for his pompous ass for years, and the moment I retire, he ended up dying doing something dumb. So yeah, they were my men, Lord Uther the Lightbringer. They specialized in finding the easiest way to complete a job, going so far as to steal whatever was needed to accomplish it, and everything else that was too underhanded for honourable officers like you to be associated with. That didn’t stop you from using the Footmen Bandits* though, did it?”

*SLAM* *CRACK* *CRUNCH*

They fought back some more undead before continuing their discussion.

“I thought they were just a rumour,” Uther said, pulling his hammer out of the body of a necromancer he just impaled with the weapons back spike.

“Yeah, and we always will be. Now…hey, what is that?” Gerard said, pointing above them.

“What is what? Oh…” He replied, looking upwards. He was just as confused as his partner. He had seen many things, but nothing quite like the sight above him.

High above them was a black rectangle that appeared to be a large blanket with a man in armour attached to it by some ropes. There were several of them, a lot actually, all coming down in a row directly above their position. Each one had either a Footman or a Rifleman attached, along with a pair of dwarves with a cannon. There was a large, flying contraption further above them, apparently where they had jumped out of. 

As the leading one got closer, they could hear the man, who was wearing a Captain’s helmet, screaming “AHHHH!! YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE, PRINCE JOHN!!! AHHHH!!!!”

“John is here?” Uther said, confused at just what was going on.

In the Pelican

“AHHHhhhh!!!!” The last footman, a man called Mike, shouted as he jumped out of the cargo bay. He was the fifteenth footman, continuing the Alphabet’s traditional naming nomenclature. The dwarf riflemen he had found out were O’bek, Pascal, Quint, Reg, Tran, and Ulric. The Steeltoe brothers filled in the missing letter in his mind, which made him laugh again at Alec or whoever came up with this.

He popped yet another ball of Substance X as he closed the hatch and made his way back to the cockpit. He had been awake for over twenty-four hours now, and he knew he was getting a little loopy, but the drug would keep him going for a bit longer. He just had to kill some undead now and save this town.

Jaina was in the co-pilot’s seat, casting some sort of inspection spell on the armrest, trying to discern the nature of the magic that DEN had cast on the ship. John had locked out her controls to make sure she didn’t bump into something important by accident, letting her inspect the ship to her heart’s content when he flew a few practice runs earlier. 

“The matrices of this magic are amazing; it is almost like the entire vessel has these filaments running through every bit of it. They appear to be almost like a spiderweb of lattices that-” She said when he entered. He wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or just dictating whatever she was seeing to herself.

They had talked briefly, but she kept her questions to a minimum, allowing him to focus on training the Alphabets to become paratroopers. Not that he knew that much about it, other than war movies and the one time he had jumped tandem with an instructor. Who in their right mind would jump out of a perfectly good airplane?

“Buckle up. We are going in.” John said, buckling up his five-point harness that the Pelican used. 

“Huh? What do you mean?” She said, snapping out of her contemplations when he spoke.

“Put the belts on like mine and hold on.” He said. At her confused look, he sighed a little bit on the inside. “Would you like me to show you?”

“Ahh.. yes, please. I have never seen a contraption like this. What is it for?”

John undid his harness and leaned over to help her, their faces coming close together. She smelled nice, the soft scent of lilacs emanating from whatever soap or perfume she was using. “It is to hold you in that seat so if I need to maneuver, you don’t get thrown out of it. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

The back of his hands pressed lightly on her firm breasts as he snapped the clip together, reminding him that he was still worked up from Sylvia earlier. His excessive use of Substance X to stay awake was not helping things. The drug that kept him awake and allowed him to get more out of his training also increased his libido significantly. Not to mention, unconscious or not, he hadn’t had a release for around three weeks now.

His remaining eye met hers, her ocean blues giving him a questioning look, her full lips quivering slightly, as if she wanted to kiss him right then. She leaned forward slightly to do so, but he pulled away, buckling himself back up and donning the helmet. This was not the time for this. 

Right now, he just wanted to forget the battle below and take advantage of the situation, consequences be damned.  He was loopy, but he wasn’t far enough gone to allow himself to do that. 

“No, Jaina, we need to talk first. Now hold on.” John said, stopping whatever she was about to say or do by turning the ship’s hovering function off and giving the engines a little forward thrust. He needed to be in a better position. With friendlies on the ground nearby the undead, he was too high up to aim the autocannon accurately. He was happy he could aim the weapon just by looking through his helmet’s HUD; his hands were beginning to shake again. 

He ignored that, already having made his choice to do this. He just needed a nap, and he would be back to normal.

A menu popped up in front of him, startling him for a moment as it wasn’t from the ship. After reading the message, he shook his head and began to chuckle at DEN’s request. If they were asking him things, he must have already broken the canon. He hit the accept button and started to laugh, a smile forming on his face. 

Hearthglen – Southwestern Gate

Eh, landed with a crash as he rolled forward as the prince had instructed, his armour noisily collided with the cobblestone street. He slapped the switch on his harness, and the backpack fell to the ground, the chute retracting into the pack and freeing him up to move again. He didn’t have time to check on the rest of his men as nearly a dozen undead creatures with giant teeth were approaching his position. Arrows rained over his head from a pair of guard towers, but they did little to slow their advance.

He drew his sword, cursing his prince again for coming up with this crazy plan, then guilt tripping him and the men with that speech. 

“Same breath as Lord Uther, my ass. I thought I was going to die on the way down, and now I am going to die from whatever those things are.” He muttered as he raised his shield and assumed a defensive stance, awaiting the incoming assault. He had to buy enough time for the rest of his men to land, hopefully nearby, and reinforce this position. 

Just before the leading group of undead arrived, an earthshattering explosion ruptured the ground at their feet.

*BOOM*

“MORTAR COMBAT!” A shout came from above him. He didn’t spare them a glance, but if he did, he would see one of the dwarf brothers swinging wildly as the kickback from his cannon shot sent him spiralling through the air while tethered to the parachute.

Three of the undead were sent flying from the explosion, their bodies skipping across the street and slamming into the walls that lined the roads. It was odd that there was no actual physical gate here, the walls ending beside the guard towers, but he didn’t have time to question it further as the next group had kept advancing. He slammed his shield into the one in the lead, then slashed at it with his sword, then took a single step back. 

He did this a few times, shouting the entire time, trying to draw their focus while his men began to land, his new armour holding out reasonably well against these monsters’ attacks. Bee and Cee joined him shortly, finally providing him with some relief and preventing him from being overwhelmed by the enemy’s numbers. At that point, another footman joined the defensive line every few seconds, allowing Eh to take a step back and actually assess their situation.

Between the monsters with giant teeth and the skeletons, the undead currently outnumbered them, but that would change shortly. Behind the lines of melee fighters, people stood in orange robes and odd looking horned masks, sending bolts of energy towards their defensive line. Several strange wagons were coming up behind them, their purpose unknown to him, but he had a bad feeling about them.

Eh’s riflemen were still descending, and other than that one shot they fired earlier, there was no sign of the mortar team yet. 

We need to do something about those, else we will star-

*BBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTT*

An even louder noise than the dwarven mortar blared overhead, causing Eh to drop to the ground in panic, his thoughts interrupted. Explosions erupted behind the undead line, the robed casters exploding in clouds of orange and pink mist as the vessel the prince called a ship flew over the Alphabet’s defensive line. 

When Eh stood back up, he just whistled softly. The road behind the line of undead, which were still engaged with the footmen, was now cratered. It was as if a couple of dozen mortar teams had shot it at the same time, destroying anything that might have been in the general vicinity. The bodies of the undead that were advancing up the road had been torn asunder, their limbs tossed haphazardly around as if an Ogre had ripped them off and thrown them.

The prince’s ship passed over their heads, a strange music blaring out of the magical machine. He only caught a few words of the song, but it sounded like “I ain’t no fortunate one.”

At that moment, Eh felt just the opposite. He felt very fortunate that the prince had this weapon and was using it to protect his men and the commonfolk of this town. 

“FOR THE PRINCE!” He shouted, charging back into the frontline.

*BBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTT*

* – Footmen Bandits are in homage to the E-4 Mafia, or whatever your country’s version of it is. Google it if you have no military background, but basically, there are certain people in most units who are lower-ranked, whom the senior-ranked members will go to to get shit done. You just don’t ask questions about how it was accomplished. And I am not talking about the everyday stuff that soldiers do. IYKYK

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep