Chapter 436 — The Magic Barrier of Boulder Fortress
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 5
And then a strange keening shriek came through the night sky, as though something heavy were hurtling toward them at great speed.
In the instant the local knight stood frozen, the southern knight he had grabbed let out a grotesque cry and did something that left everyone dumbstruck: wrenching free of the hand at his collar, he dove under the table at once, shouting at the top of his voice, "Skyfire's coming down! The Cecil men's magic!"
Nor was he alone—in other corners of the tavern, several southern knights and dissolute soldiers likewise dove for the nearest tables, shouting as they scrambled, and what they shouted was, almost without exception, Skyfire and the Cecil men's magic—
The local knight was dumbfounded for a moment. He had meant to berate this craven wretch before him, in whom no trace of a knight's dignity remained, to berate him for such degradation—but then a deafening explosion came from the direction of the southern wall, a blast that shook even the tavern's timber frame and sent great sheets of dust sifting down from the rafters. In an instant the tavern was in pandemonium.
The southern knight poked his head out from under the table and shouted into the chaos: "Skyfire! Skyfire's coming down! Find somewhere to hide! Get down on the ground! Don't stand there running about!"
"Calm down! Order! Take up your weapons and report to the wall!" the local knight howled himself hoarse. "Stop running wild!"
But the second and third explosions that followed on its heels reduced his efforts to nothing; blast after blast rolled in from the south of the fortress, and the last of them seemed to burst directly over everyone's heads.
And yet, amid this unbroken succession of explosions—as spectacular as high-order spells cast by master mages—the southern knight under the table had somehow crawled back out, and out with him came the other southern knights and soldiers who had found cover or thrown themselves flat at the first instant.
"Something's off about that noise..." the southern knight muttered to himself. "It isn't landing on the ground... it isn't coming down inside the city..."
The local knight could not make out the low murmur at all; he bellowed through the pandemonium, "What did you say!?"
"I said something's off! The Skyfire isn't hitting us!"
The southern knight suddenly shouted aloud, and then, to the astonishment of everyone in the tavern, several southerners abruptly rushed out the door.
They burst into the open ground outside the tavern, forced down the fear crawling along their nerves, and raised their eyes toward where the Skyfire had exploded—and then they saw it: the vast barrier that shrouded all of Boulder Fortress.
A hazy corona of light rose from the edge of Boulder Fortress's dark, solemn walls; upon those walls countless magical runes blazed and glittered, and the energy barrier enveloping the whole fortress, sustained by those runes, rippled and shimmered with flowing colour. Through that translucent halo the southerners could clearly see several pale blue streaks of light cutting swiftly across the darkness and striking the barrier—or the distant walls beyond.
A thunderous explosion rang out, and the southern knight and his companions instinctively sagged where they stood—but the blast only surged up outside the barrier. The vast flare of light was like some grand firework conjured by an illusion mage: deafening, shaking the air, raising layer upon layer of radiance across the surface of the energy barrier, and yet never passing through into what it sheltered.
More pale blue streaks streaked across the night sky and fell upon the barrier and the walls, but the southern knight and his companions had steadied themselves. They stared wide-eyed as those dreadful Skyfires burst outside the barrier, and the fear on their faces was at last slowly replaced by wild joy.
The terrible "Skyfire" had been stopped.
The legendary ancient magic walls of Boulder Fortress had proven their might.