The first shot hit dead on. It had come from a grenade launcher, and had squarely struck the spot I's said to aim for. Now that the first shot had come, tons more had followed. The sound of heavy objects and explosives hitting the outer wall rings in my ears.
The quicker soldiers are out first, getting ready. Jason knows the outer wall won't last long under constant fire. I have to say, I'm impressed with the students of wind. They work fast and efficiently, and in a few minutes, the outer wall is all but gone. That out of the way, us ground troops move in.
As according to plan, I move towards the front gate, while the majority of the troops sneak around back. As soon as our sides meet at the front door, I get into a fight with somebody, but he's only got a knife. A single shotgun shell is all I need. That was a human, but now there's the more powerful shadow monsters coming out the door. These things are basically masses of shadow that Jason personally controls, and are in a kind of human shape. The only way to kill one is to use your element. I destroy one with a fireball, and then Batholith comes out. Of course, now that I have to focus on something besides him he's here. Almost immediately, he attacks Chris, who just finished off a shadow monster with the help of a student of wind. He can't kill shadow monsters.
Chris pulls out the claymore, and starts fighting. I'm busy fighting my way to the front gate, and I can get glances of him. He's good with the weapon, not because he can swing it easily though. A grown man couldn't do that. He's good with it because the blade is of course metal. The blade twists out of shape and stabs Batholith, but I know that won't kill him.
You see, Batholith's insides are literally molten lave, and his skin is a tough crust around it. The only way a person could kill him is if they could control fire, so they could draw all the lava out of him after getting an open wound. I nearly did this once, with my friend Grace's help, but Jason found us and basically recharged Batholith. From then on, Batholith serves Jason personally.
That's why he's here. I manage to catch Chris' attention, and he nods. He didn't forget about helping me inside. He manages to get Batholith away from him, and fights his way to the door. I'm already there, and Sandra comes out of nowhere right up to us. We don't say anything, and go inside.
"So where do you think Jason's hiding?" Sandra asks.
"Probably in one of the pre-made rooms. He likes luxury, and shadow isn't good at that."
We start looking around, and the crashes of the bombardment echo through the place. Eventually, we come to a large set of double doors. I motion for them to stay here in case I needed backup, and head into one.
There, looking out a window, is Jason. He turns when I walk in.
"Well, look who it is." He says. He sounds...what's the word... Amused, I guess.
"Where's Cade?" I ask, trying to stay on topic.
He pulls out a small map, marks a spot on it, and shows the chart to me.
"If you can beat me" He says "I'll give this to you. It'll tell you where she is."
Of course, the first thing I do is pull out my sword. Bullets can't hurt him, but I can block the scythe with a sword. I try to think of a plan. I remember once, Right after he got the shadow eye. Shadow covered his body, but after fighting him for a few minutes, he got exhausted and half his body lost it's shadow covering and became vulnerable again. If I can do that again, I'll have him beat.
Then, without any warning, Jason lunges forward. A scythe seems to grow from his hand, and it comes straight at me. I block it, and blast him backwards with an explosion, followed by a fireball. The flames engulf him, but he doesn't even seem to care. Still on fire, he comes at me again, and I block. I grab the handle of his scythe, and give a stab, straight for his left eye. Jason's hand instinctively comes up to block it, but the sword goes through anyway, and hits it's target. He shakes my hand off his weapon, and gets a good-sized cut on my leg, and I fall back. Then his gray aura thing comes on. It forms into six points, and those points come at me like spears. I block the closest one and the second one with my sword and kick the third one, blast the next two away with an explosion, and dodge out of the last one's way before smacking it with my sword. Then I lunge for Jason, but the grayness hardens into a shield and blocks my sword. The shield grows spikes and then widens until it makes a deadly wall that spans the room. It flies at me, and I barely have time to blast a hole in the plaster wall and get through, with a slash on my foot. I crawl back in, and blast fire at him while the shield's gone, and it hits him.
At this point, I can tell he's getting a little tired, but only a little bit.
He once again rushes forward, and we do a series of complicated sword fighting moves that I barely think about. Then, our blades lock above our heads, and Jason uses his supernatural strength to press down wit the scythe. I have to use two hands, and while I'm keeping that blade away, Jason's fingertips grow pointed and he nearly stabs me in the chest with his claws. I ducked out of the way, and feel my back hit the door I came in through.
I'm getting tired at this point (Overusing your element physically exhausts you like working out) and am panting hard. Jason's just getting started. That's when I remember Sandra and Chris. As soon as Jason's blade hits mine, I call for them, and the door behind me opens. A short sword barely misses me, and hit's Jason's chest. He looks surprised for a moment, but then feels Sandra grab the flat of the blade and electrify it. He staggers back, but then pulls the blade out and sends a shockwave of pure energy out in every direction. It sends all three of us flying backwards, and I feel stunned for a second. That seems to be all Jason needs, because he appears in front of me, ready to run me through, but Sandra blocks his blade. She knocks his blade backwards, and I stab his eye again, but this time with my knife.
Jason pulls it out, but after fighting all three of us for at least twenty minutes straight, plus the twenty I spent fighting him alone, he's getting tired. He keeps fighting us though. I have to admit, Jason's a good fighter. The three of us are supposed to be some of the most powerful students of fire, and he's not only fighting all three of us at once; He's holding his own. He blocks my blade, kicks Chris' claymore into the air, and knocks Sandra backwards with that gray stuff all in the same instant. But in the next second, he hits a pitfall. He used as much shadow as his body can allow, and shadow starts seeping off the right side of his body and going towards the shadow eye. His human form shows up. As a human, Jason has dark brown hair, almost black, metallic gray eyes (Which oddly enough, I have too)and a few burn marks from the last time this happened. Now he got a few more. The minute his human half showed up, I blasted it with fire. I can't imagine how painful that had to be, and he started retreating to the shadow dimension where he could heal. But before he left, he dropped the paper with the hand that wasn't on fire. I picked it up as soon as he was gone.
That's when I heard cheering outside. I looked out the window, and saw that no more shadow army members were left. They were gone with Jason.
Following the directions of the map, we found our way to the basement.
The second I opened the door, I saw Cade. She was wearing the same clothes as when she'd gotten taken, but was otherwide unhurt. I immediately ran to her, and we basicall locked onto each other. We stayed like that for a bit unti Chris said
"Why don't we unchain her first?"
He tapped the chain, and it broke at her ankle.
As soon as we had finished hugging, the four of us went back upstairs. The soldiers waited for us outside, and we all traveled back to our homes. The battle was over.
When I woke up this morning, I was at my desk, with the completed battle plan laid out in front of me. I didn't go eat breakfast; I get queasy before a full-blown battle, so I headed to the armory. I selected my favorite weapons, the ones I'm most comfortable using, the Mossberg shotgun, my favorite saber, and a long Celtic-styled knife.
Now, I'm heading down the halls towards the portal room. I vaguely remember sending the battle plan to the students of wind last night, so unless Harry backed out on his offer, they should be there already. I think about how hungry I am, but I know that there will be food later. Mostly though, I think about Cade. I wonder what's happening to her, and silently swear that if Jason moved a hair out of place, I'd personally kill him. Anger burns in my stomach, scorching`the butterflies that normally would be there.
I reach the portal room to find Chris and Sandra waiting for me. Chris is a quiet guy, average height, dressed in kind of an emo style. He's got the long black hair and everything, but is supposedly a better fighter then Zander, and that's saying something. Chris is armed with a claymore, which for those who don't know is a massive Celtic sword, and a wide assortment of knives. I think his weaponry choice is because of his element: He doesn't really have what could be considered an element, because he can control metal of any kind.
Sandra is a smaller girl, petite is the word I guess, with short blond hair. She dresses like the popular kids at my former school, except that she's armed with a pistol and a spear. She's supposedly really smart, and can control electricity.
"Hi Jack" Sandra says cheerily.
I give a weak smile; The butterflies in my stomach are coming back.
"How are you so cheerful before a battle?" Chris asks in a quiet voice.
"You just smile a lot" I reply. I give a gesture towards the portal.
"After you." I say.
"Thank you" Says Sandra, walking stepping into the portal.
Chris grunts and walks in after her.
When we get out the other end of the portal, we come face-to-face with the students of wind. They're just kind of standing there in rows, like how I used to have to in boot camp. They're all facing a mansion, except it's definitely not an ordinary mansion. It has what looks like tar all over it, coming from inside the windows, and the tar stuff alone has made the mansion the size of a small castle, with towers and a wall around it. The works.
"Are we just gonna attack now?" I ask.
"You tell us" Sandra says "This was your idea, remember?"
I nod. Then, to the students of wind, I yell
"Whoever's in charge of you guys, get over here!" Several people come forward, and I explain my plan to them. Jason's basically a military genius, so he's hard to outsmart, but I have what should be a fairly adequate plan of attack.
"He'll have his soldiers out in force" I explain "So we'll have some people remain here, and fire long range attacks on that wall, and then the castle.
"Once the outer wall breaks" I continue "Only then will we allow soldiers to move in to actually fight. And even then, some are gonna have to stay here and keep up bombardment.
"As for the large group that will be moving in, a quarter of us will feint to the side, while a third attack the front gate. The best fighters will be in that frontal attack group. The largest part of our forces will be in a mass at the back of the mansion. But" I look up "This is important. The group at the back will stay there the entire time." The officers look up in surprise.
"Why would we keep the biggest forces from fighting?" One of the students of wind asks.
"Because, he'll be expecting a force at the back. When he sees small groups fighting at the front and sides, he'll know we're coming in at the back too. And if our forces are small enough on those angles, he'll focus the main part of his troops there, too, to counter the attack that won't come." I look up.
"That sounds...risky for the people at the front and sides."
"That's why only the very best troops will go there. There's tons of exits out of the front and sides, so the bombardment will have to seal up a few, but not too many. I'll be entering at the front gate, but as soon as I'm in, you guys need to get out of here. I don't want any students of wind dying. Any questions?"
No one said anything. Some of them were scratching their heads, shaking their heads, but no objections came up. Until Sandra said
"Chris and me'll go in with you."
"No way" I reply instantly.
"Do you really think you'll last a minute in there alone once there's no more people keeping the soldiers away from the indoors? You'll be overpowered in a few minutes at best."
"We'll send some soldiers in with you, and keep the distraction going." Said one of the officers "We're willing to help. That's why we're here."
I look around, then say "Alright, fine. If you wanna die."
With that, everybody started getting up. Before they could leave, I stopped them.
"Wait, who's in charge of bombarding the walls?"
"Me" Says a tall guy.
"Tell your men to aim for what looks like the strongest spots in the wall, but not at the cracks. The strong looking spots are actually the weakest."
The guy nods and walks off, towards the assortment of missile launchers and cannons.
I look at Chris and Sandra.
"You two ready?"
Chris nods gravely, and Sandra says
"Ready as I'll ever be."
I look at the dark walls. Cade's in there.
"Good. We're about to start."
A cannon fires the first shot.
I enter Fire castle quickly. I'm angry enough to punch a hole in the wall, if the walls weren't made of stone. I pass by everybody and go straight to straight to Mark, who's sitting down with somebody I don't recognize.
"I need Keleigh, Zander, Grace, and Jared."
Mark stares at me.
"Hello to you to. Why?"
"Jason kidnapped Cade."
He looks at my face for a few seconds, then shakes his head.
"Sorry, but I can't. They're some of our best soldiers."
"That's exactly why I need them" I say "If I'm going to get Cade back, I'll need to basically invade wherever Jason's hiding, and for that I'll need some of the best."
Mark shook his head again.
"Zander's visiting possible allies, Grace is helping out at Lurgeress Fortress, Jared is in a battle with Ares' army, and Keleigh is visiting contacts trying to get information. They all are busy now, but I can get all of them for certain in a week, except Jared."
"Well, what am I supposed to do!?" I ask him. Mark looks thoughtful, and says
"I can get Chris and Sandra to help." Those two are Mark's friends, and are supposed to be really good. But two people won't be enough. I'm just about to give up with reasoning and start cursing him out when the guy Mark was talking to says
"I could lend you some soldiers."
I look at him.
"Jack, this is the Martial commander of the students of Wind." Mark says.
"Harry Smith. Pleased to meet you." He says.
"He's here because I asked him to stop remaining neutral and help us. If he does, they can have their allies to help out as well."
"I've decided" Harry says.
"If this invasion succeeds, I'll join you." His eyes narrow.
"But if I have to lend you soldiers to do the invasion, I'll have to ask a favor of you, Jack."
I think for a second, and say
"How many soldiers?"
"How many do you need?"
"If they're really, really good fighters, twenty or so."
"Then I'll lend you sixty of my best."
I stare at him.
"Chris and Sandra will come as well." Mark says.
"When are you leaving?" Asks Harry.
"Tomorrow" I answer, and after thanking him, I leave the room.
I walk down the hall, wondering what kind of favor he needs me to do if he's prepared to give me sixty people as payment. It would have to be pretty bad. I head to the map rooms, and check out the Shadow Chart. It's basically a bunch of maps that show shadow activity everywhere. It shows activity with splotches of color, and those splotches can actually move across the map as the forces move. Usually, if it's just the shadow army, it's a light gray splotch where they're at, but Jason always looks like a pitch black splotch. Today, he's in Herolade, at an abandoned mansion. I check the blueprints for it from the library, and begin making a plan of attack. The whole time I'm doing it, I can mentally see the image of Jason and Cade disappearing. Then I refocus and get back to planning. Tomorrow, we attack.
[BREAK]
My alarm clock rang into my ear. That ring is my least favorite sound in the world. But, I sighed and stood up, and got into the shower. Once I was done in there, I put on a Pink Floyd T-shirt and heard a knock at my door. I opened...
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