Chapter 91 — What on Earth Hatched Out of It
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
And just like that, the crisis was over.
With the last monster collapsing under Sir Philip's blade with a wail, not a single living aberration remained on the battlefield—only a field of bones steadily decomposing and drifting away, and a band of soldiers nearly spent of all their strength.
No new monsters came charging out of the mountains, and from the direction of the Dark Mountains came no more of that thunderous booming.
For a full half minute it stayed that way, until Sir Byron was the first to raise a cheer.
The soldiers followed, then the militia, then the civilians and serfs in the camp, and the cheering swept across the south bank of the Whitewater River. Every last soul knew of this victory—and for those who had lived through the old Cecil disaster, it carried a meaning beyond the ordinary.
Those who had drawn up the plan knew how much of this victory owed to favorable terrain and timing, how much to luck and risk, how many variables had lain beyond their control. But most ordinary folk knew nothing of that. They knew only that hundreds upon hundreds of monsters had come surging up from the south, nearly ten times the camp's fighting strength, and in less than half a day every one of them had been annihilated—not a single one had even made it through the camp's palisade.
All that crushing pressure now poured out in a wild, carnival clamor. Even Amber, who had just returned to camp with Hedy, could not help but catch the fever and join in the celebration.
But she had not been cheering long before she noticed that Gao Yang was nowhere among them. So she caught hold of little Betty the maid as she hurried past—the girl was at that moment trailing behind the druid Pi Yun, arms full of potion bottles. "Where's your master?"
Betty shook her head vigorously. "I don't know!"
"He's in that tent to the south," Pi Yun said, stopping and turning his head to speak quickly. "Something's gone wrong with that dragon egg again, seems like. Ah, no time to talk—I've got to get these potions over, there are a lot of wounded!"
The little old man hurried off with the little maid at his heels. Amber glanced around, decided there really was nothing here that needed her, and vanished in a flicker of shadow.
In the tent at the south end of camp, Gao Yang and Rebecca had long since heard the cheering ringing across the whole camp—the outcome was settled; the crisis had passed, safely enough. Sir Byron had already sent someone over to ask about the next arrangements, and Gao Yang had sent word back that the two knights should see to the aftermath of the battlefield first, while he and Rebecca stayed here a while longer, facing this stone sphere that was supposedly a "dragon egg."
Outside the tent, the monsters' carcasses were crumbling away swiftly, and the soldiers were gathering the leftover skeletons into piles to await natural decomposition. The stone sphere that had just unleashed such devastation had now returned to the tent, where it floated quietly some tens of centimeters off the ground, holding some sort of awkward standoff with Gao Yang.
"Honestly, that scared me to death just now," the sphere said, rocking in place, its voice a metallic quaver from somewhere within. "Those things, those—what do you call them—aberration things, right? Why did they all suddenly come charging at me..."
"I've got no idea what makes you so attractive to them, but you—a single 'person'—crushed a dozen monsters to death, and now you're going to tell me you were scared?" Gao Yang eyed the peculiar orb sidelong. "And after all that, it turns out you can not only move on your own but talk, too... So you've been playing dumb this whole time?"