He paused, panting, holding his shield.
The horror was staggering even though there seemed to be no visible damage to it. All the sekasha’s hacking slashes at the claws had done nothing to mar the gleaming gold chitin. The delicate transparent wings weren’t even scorched. The only markings were odd yet familiar spell runes.
“Oh, no!” Wolf whispered as he recognized it.
Wraith Arrow couldn’t have heard Wolf but a glance at his face made Wraith Arrow flash “What is it?” in blade talk.
Wolf signed: “Conference with me.”
Wraith Arrow stepped closer so that his personal shield overlapped Wolf. The howl of the horror reduced enough that they could hear each other shout.
“The runes on the horror! It’s the same spell that the oni used on little dogs to make them bigger than a horse. It’s why your blades aren’t damaging it; the outside is a solid illusion created by magic. The other four small scorpions in camp can be this size instantly; all the oni need to do is trigger the spell.”
Wraith Arrow nodded slowly as he grasped the implications. “Stormhorse said that you needed to kill the beast within the illusion, but that his bullets wouldn’t pass straight through the outer layer. They were deflected from a killing blow within the illusion.”
“The metal of the bullet would be influenced by the spell. A spell arrow would fly straight.”
“If we could see the inner flesh,” Wraith Arrow pointed out. “There’s no guessing where the beast actually is inside that monstrosity.”
The horror in front of them was larger than a building but the creature at its core was only the size of a horse. The sekasha would need to see the vulnerable heart protected within the illusion. Tinker had disrupted the constructs at the junkyard with the powerful magnet that she used to lift automobiles. How could he replicate that effect with his magic without making the scorpion more dangerous? Wait — when he had shot the dogs, the metal within the bullet disrupted the illusion momentarily even as the spell changed the bullet’s path.
“Try shooting it,” Wolf said.
Wraith Arrow nodded his understanding. He flashed instructions in blade talk. His people normally carried custom-made, low-metal assault rifles. The guns still had the possibility of warping the sekasha’s personal shield, so many of the older warriors refused to carry them in active combat. They preferred to rely on spell arrows. With the laedin deployed to the Stone Clan, it meant that only five of his people had rifles. While the rest stood ready with spell arrows, the five opened fire.
The bullets pinged off the glowing chitin.
Wraith Arrow signaled a cease-fire. “We need something bigger to punch through that shell.”
Wolf needed a big piece of metal. Was there something he could use in the oni camp? He focused on the signatures from Cana Lily’s large scry. There was a small knot of oni loading up a mortar launcher. The weapon was a tall tube of metal with an explosive dropped down into it. As the shell soared out, Wolf grabbed hold of the rocket-like round with his wind and jerked it toward him.
“Get ready!” he shouted although he knew that his people probably wouldn’t hear him over the monster’s din. He needed to trust that they would guess what he was doing.
Wraith Arrow must have recognized what spell Wolf cast. His First flashed “Ready arrows!” in blade talk. Those holding rifles swapped quickly to bows.
It was like trying to guide an invisible fish through a raging river. The wind didn’t allow more than violent pushes and pulls. The mortar roared across the distance and slammed into the massive horror. For a moment, the illusion flickered, going transparent to reveal the phoenix scorpion inside like a small gleaming heart. A moment was all the sekasha needed. They released their taut bowstrings. Fifteen shafts of pure light leapt the distance and struck home. The massive form crumpled to the ground, the illusion spell continuing even after the heart was dead.
The sudden quiet was blissful.
“You said that there were four more?” Wraith Arrow asked as he shouldered his bow.
Wolf nodded as he focused again on Cana Lily’s ground scry. Darkness and his people were killing everything inside the oni camp with force strikes and spell arrows. Darkness blocked the eastern gate out of the fort. To the north, columns of fire marked where Prince True Flame fought. With the cages holding the horrors in the west, most of the oni were choosing to flee south toward Sunder. Hir let them come in a massive wave and then cast the spell “liquefy.” The oni foundered in the sudden pool of liquid mud. Hir followed with “condense” and the ground returned to solid, encasing the oni under the rock-hard surface.
The small phoenix scorpions were still in their cages. Wolf started a call-lightning, hoping to kill them before they could be enlarged. Even as he focused on them, someone worked to free them. Like most of the Skin Clan creations, the beasts were untamed monsters, meaning that they would kill even their owners if they came into range. The cages were stout and the oni were having trouble getting close to the already enraged beasts.
Wolf made their life harder by raining lightning down on their heads. The thick ironwood timbers of the magically reinforced cages, though, were protecting the scorpions. The horrors were unharmed even as their handlers were killed. Darkness retreated farther east, his shields flickering as he switched to one that would protect his people from Wolf’s spells.
“Can’t you see that I’m not doing damage?” Wolf growled at the distant domana that had no way of hearing him. “Hit them!”
Forest Moss dropped the shield he’d been holding for Sunder and cast liquefy under the cage furthest from Darkness. The trapped horror sunk into the earth. Once it was entombed, Forest Moss solidified the ground around it.
“Good!” Wolf reported to Wraith Arrow what the Stone Clan domana were doing.
“But will that kill them?” Wraith Arrow asked.
“It will keep the oni from enlarging them. The cages should hold; they’re magically reinforced ironwood.” Wolf cast his shield, waiting to see how the fight within the fort resolved. He couldn’t do much more without endangering Darkness’s people.
Forest Moss carefully entombed two more cages while Darkness attempted to back out of the fort, away from the earth turning to mud. He was hampered by the flood of oni who had realized that the south was a death trap.
Wolf did flame strikes to clear the way for Darkness. Once the Stone Clan moved back, Forest Moss entombed the last cage.
Wolf paused in his attack to take stock of the battlefield. The oni seemed to be moving without plan, attacking whatever lay in front of them instead of acting as units. Were all the oni commanders dead? Or were there never commanders present? Considering the black-willow-infested swamp, the trench of poisoned stakes, and the caged horrors, the camp felt like a huge trap. Wolf couldn’t have taken it alone. He suspected even the Harbingers would have found it difficult. True Flame would have been helpless against the scorpions.
The others might consider it an easy battle, but it could have been very different if they hadn’t worked together. Wolf wouldn’t have wanted to go into this fight with Earth Son or Cana Lily at his back. The Harbingers understood the need to put differences aside.
Did the oni not expect domana from three clans to move against them? Wolf would have been hard-pressed to win by himself. Queen Soulful Ember had been bracing for this battle since before Pittsburgh arrived on Elfhome. The speed at which Prince True Flame had arrived in force meant that his cousin had been standing ready for the call. He could have had his brother Blue Jay here if he’d been wise enough to ask.