V6Ch3-The Battle of Orlando Part 2

Claudius Galt shook slightly as the horde of lizards ran away.

Yes, the monsters were afraid of him and his fellow soldiers. But he knew worse was coming. This was the city he had fled mere weeks ago, after all.

It belonged to the creatures now.

As he tried to steady his hands, he realized that some of the shaking in his body wasn’t coming from nervousness. The ground was moving slightly, too.

He swallowed and tried to tell himself the Orlando monsters were more afraid of the human intruders than the soldiers were of them.

Then the ground shook harder and more forcefully still. Something massive was approaching. Claudius braced himself. Mainly, he ordered his legs not to turn and run the opposite way. If he ran from the action, he could never face the men and women beside him again. The Fisher Kingdom would never become a home for him and his family—as it seemed to be on track to do so far.

The ground quaked once more, and Claudius heard the sound of an impact perhaps a hundred feet away. The direction the noise traveled from was blocked from direct sight by buildings.

Then a great green shape leaped over one of those buildings. Claudius saw a pale, partially translucent green body, with eight spindly limbs, outlined against the rising morning sunlight, and then a spider the size of a large school bus landed in front of the Army’s lines.

The ground shook with the impact, and Claudius almost lost his footing at the moment the tremor reached him. That had to be some sort of Skill, right? The creature did not seem large enough for its bulk alone to have that effect.

Then again, it also seemed too big to jump like a grasshopper through the air. Claudius stared at it, fascinated.

He noticed that in addition to the striking pale, partially translucent green of its body, the monster’s eyes were highlighted with a bright orange coloration. And he saw the monster’s sides move.

Oh.

This giant arthropod was covered in smaller versions of itself, he realized. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of miniature specimens crawled over the surface of its body, leaving only its slender legs and head largely unobstructed. Each one was roughly the size of an average human adult. The meaning of the sight clicked into place for Claudius.

Those were the spider’s offspring.

It’s a female, and she brought her army with her, he thought.

The presence of the creature washed over the Army a moment later, a pressure that might have buckled Claudius’s knees if he hadn’t already been paying inordinate attention to what his legs and feet were doing.

If it hadn’t been obvious already, that confirmed that they were in the presence of the first Ruler they had encountered up close since entering the city—the Rat King not counting, since it had run away without engaging them for some reason instead of drawing nearer to the Army to give battle.

The spider Ruler emitted a low noise. A moment later, Claudius realized that it was very similar to a human clearing the throat. The monster began to speak.

“Chosen One of Anansi,” the giant spider said in a slow, booming female voice. “Welcome. How may we be of service to the Spider God’s most favored mortal?”

Claudius watched in stunned silence as James floated up into the air to speak with the creature eye to eye. This monster wanted to serve the Fisher King. Of course it did. In addition to being a powerful Ruler, he had been blessed by one of these cosmic beings that called themselves deities. A deity that happened to be a god of spiders or something.

God, don’t ever let me get on his bad side…

There were a few words from the Ruler to the giant spider that Claudius was simply too far away to pick up. His senses were not that much improved since the System came.

But the Fisher King’s next bit of dialogue was deliberately loud enough for the entire army to hear.

“Help me and my army to take this city,” James said loudly. “We will claim each territory for our own. We are restoring order and ending this period of warring miniature states in this region. Every Ruler must either submit, flee, or perish.” His words rang with power and conviction. Then he added something, almost as if deliberately reminding himself and the Army why they were really there. “We are also looking for some of our own—a group of humans—who were taken captive here some time ago. Please protect them if you find them.”

The spider’s voice rang through the air again, a low rhythmic sound. It took Claudius a moment to recognize it was slow, rumbling laughter.

“It will be my pleasure to assist you,” she said once her mirth had subsided. “By the way, I am called Mageddon.”

“Nice to meet you,” James said. And though Claudius could not see his face, he could hear the bright and vicious smile in his voice.

For the next phase of the invasion, the front line of the Army advanced behind the giant spider. This march continued for the next several blocks, as they finally moved past the periphery of Orlando and into the city proper.

There were smaller creatures, reptiles and giant rodents and other, less easily identifiable things, but these creatures remained hidden in the shadows and even seemed to draw back and try to get distance as the Army approached.

Claudius wasn’t sure if that was because they were afraid of the spider specifically or if it was simply the confluence of multiple Rulers in a single place, as a part of a united force.

Either way, the hesitance of the monsters made for quick and easy progress at first.

Claudius got a good look at how the city had changed since he was last present. For the most part, it was simply falling further into decay and disrepair—some of the buildings that he knew had seen their windows shattered or their doors ruined from the System’s arrival now sported plant life growing through the broken places.

Perhaps more unsettling, there were also more constructive changes.

A few rooftops featured what appeared to be a mess of branches and brush that had been assembled and tangled together to build what Claudius slowly recognized as birds’ nests. Perhaps these were property of the pigeons he and the others had seen earlier.

A half dozen buildings had a giant spider web hung between them. From the size, Claudius guessed it might belong to their new friend.

And some sort of insect colony had created a giant nest around the facade of a skyscraper that had broken in half under the Mage Corps’ assault. The nest and the building now lay in pieces on the ground. Shattered larvae bodies oozed yellowish fluids and slowly writhed in their final death throes alongside the bodies of dead humans and monsters that had apparently been captured by the insect colony to serve as food for the larvae.

Everything Claudius saw felt like a scene from some horror movie—or perhaps, if he detached enough, merely a confirmation that Orlando wasn’t theirs anymore. It had a new set of owners.

The only piece of countervailing evidence was those destroyed buildings that the Mage Corps had brought down since their arrival, as well as the hundreds of dead monsters the Army left in its wake.

The forces of humanity—no, the forces of order, and against entropy—were striking back.

Claudius clung to that idea as he stepped over and around horrors that he knew he would never be able to erase from his memory—partially hollowed out bodies of humans, dismembered monsters, and the ruined city.

Block after block passed, the soldiers advancing into the center of the city. Claudius almost began to feel brave, like a liberating soldier retaking his homeland from an occupying army.

Finally, the Army stepped into a more open area, and Claudius saw them.

The monsters that he had thought were avoiding them had gathered in the largest public park in the city, around Lake Eola. Thousands of them. Perhaps ten thousand or more. They certainly outnumbered the Fisher Kingdom’s forces, even including the Panther Army, the giant green spider Ruler, and her children.

The mass of enemies included not just creatures Claudius had seen—those specimens had probably been scouts, in retrospect—but also monsters Claudius had dared to hope were deliberately keeping their distance. And they had been trying to keep away from the Royal Fisher Army, as it turned out. This group of monsters had wanted to make a united front and defend their new home against the intruders together.

Perhaps that was the logical thing to do, to ensure no one faction was critically weakened fighting the invading army. These monsters had reached some sort of delicate ecological balance over the last few months of fighting over territory. They were intelligent enough that they did not want to ruin that now.

Floating above or at the head of their respective armies, Claudius counted six creatures that were clearly Rulers opposing the Fisher Kingdom: a giant wasp of some sort which he guessed was the owner of the nest the Mage Corps had destroyed; a massive pigeon that looked like a larger, beefier version of the pigeons that had confronted the Mage Corps when they entered the city; a big black swan; a possum the size of a man with six limbs instead of the usual four, long blades protruding from each one; a gargantuan slug the color of dead leaves, almost as large as the giant spider on the Fisher Kingdom’s size; and the Rat King that had fled from the Army earlier.

Claudius had begun to feel some confidence given the number and force of those who surrounded him, but his old feelings of fear and self-doubt started creeping up as the Royal Fisher Army and the assembled six armies under their respective Rulers stared off.

He had left the city before out of sheer cowardice. How could Claudius possibly imagine that even surrounded by an army of people united by the same purpose, he could stand his ground against such a terrifying array of monsters?

“Is this the best you guys could do?” James’s voice called out in a derisive tone. Claudius looked up and saw the Fisher King floating above the Army and just in front of the Mage Corps, suspended in midair by some power of his own. He was facing the six opposing Rulers, looking at each of them in turn as he spoke loudly enough for the members of all armies present to hear. “A bunch of bugs and prey animals? You couldn’t get any of the real powers in this city to join in your little effort, could you? Well, lucky for you, I’m not hear to commit another Xenocide. I’ve driven enough species to extinction for my liking already. So I’ll give you to the count of ten to clear out. Then I’ll start killing Rulers.”

The other side took in the Fisher King’s words, and Claudius actually felt a ripple move through them. But none of them backed down, not yet. They had all resolved themselves to fight and perhaps die here before they came.

The opposing Rulers didn’t budge an inch—as if James’s words had been nothing but wind.

But the effect on Claudius and those around him was much more potent. He felt his spine suddenly regaining its steel. He could do this. Even if he couldn’t win, he could at least fight.

Maybe—maybe there was some hope after all.

“Hey, could one of you guys do something about this aura that’s all around us?” James said loudly from above. “I can feel it, and it’s annoying, so I can’t imagine what it feels like for everyone else. They need to fight at their best.”

“I’m on it!” the Panther Queen called out. She added, somewhat under her breath, but loud enough for Claudius to hear—and therefore certainly more than loud enough for James to hear, “Aren’t you glad you allowed me to remain a Ruler?”

The Fisher King did not give an answer that Claudius heard. His senses were pulled away from the conversation anyway.

Claudius sensed the Panther Queen’s aura as it spread from her body. It hit everyone around him almost at once. From what he could see by looking around, it settled itself first within her Pantherfolk, and then gradually in the bodies of the other members of the Fisher Kingdom’s invasion force.

After a moment, he understood why it was taking a bit longer to spread through the non-Pantherfolk.

He felt her aura pierce through him—not forcing its way in, but asking to be invited. That gap—the moments when one had to decide whether or not to let this power inside—was responsible for the delay. For the Pantherfolk, the decision had already been made long in advance.

Claudius didn’t hesitate. He put up no resistance at all to the foreign energy that wanted to permeate all of the bodies around it. If the Fisher King was willing to trust the Queen—no, to ask her to do this—it must be safe.

The Panther Queen’s aura entered his cells, and he felt the effects almost immediately. The strength of ten of him seemed to flow through his body. His fears and doubts receded into the distant background, like they’d been some sort of optical illusion. Claudius sensed intuitively that something like how he perceived himself and his situation now was what a more talented fighter experienced every day.

Every muscle tensed, every nerve crackled with energy. He knew that he was ready for whatever was to come next.

So this is what being important feels like, Claudius thought.

“Excellent,” the Fisher King said from above. He raised his voice again, to such a volume that half the city could probably hear it. “Now I’ll start counting down. Ten. Nine Eight. Seven. Six. This is really the last chance for any of the Rulers to back down! I might let your subordinates live, but none of you can raise a hand against me and expect to survive! Five. Four. Three. Two. One…”