Chapter 262: Hidden Weapons |
Corporal Tristain grumbled as he adjusted the unfamiliar weight of his new rifle. Some new design they were calling the Needle Gun.
Why it was called that when it fired concentrated bolts of ether was beyond him, but the thing worked.
Instead of a wide discharge, it released a narrow, high-powered beam of compressed ether. Thin and precise, built for penetration rather. Where older weapons blasted and flared, this one stabbed.
Most of the design hinged on the optics. A new glass-like material, grown by the Hive and fused into the rifle’s housing, shaped and focused the discharge. The same material formed the scope mounted on top, a lens array that pulled distant shapes into startling clarity. Subtle enchantments woven into the glass enhanced contrast and granted a modest improvement in night vision.
The only problem was the cartridges.
The ether crystal loads did not last long. Ten shots, that was it. After that, you reloaded. Just ten precise chances before the ritual of swapping crystals and reseating the housing.
The barrel was long, almost awkwardly so. Built for stability and velocity, not convenience. In tight positions, it felt like trying to manoeuvre a spear through brush. But at least it came with a bipod.
Tristain flipped the bipod down and let the legs bite into a nearby tree root. Crouched low, breathing slow and controlled, the length of the barrel finally made sense. The rifle settled into place as if it had always belonged there.
Like him, it was buried beneath camouflage. Leaves woven through the frame. Thin branches tied along the stock. A mottled cloak draped over his shoulders that, at a glance, passed for shrubbery.
He scanned the opposing treeline. Across the river, the night pulsed with intermittent flashes. Red ether bolts streaked from his side in sharp, disciplined lines, cutting through the darkness. From the far bank came answering bursts of pale white, heavier discharges that flared briefly before vanishing into the canopy. The heavy ether bolters around him rattled in controlled bursts, spitting streams of red light across the water. Each impact lit the treeline in brief, violent flashes.
From the elven side, the ballista answered.
Great enchanted bolts arced over the river, trailing faint runic glows before slamming into earth or timber with thunderous cracks. When they struck, they did not simply pierce. They detonated, shards of splintered wood and ether scattering in bright, violent blooms.
In the back of his mind, Tristain felt the absence of a spotter. Another set of eyes would have been useful, someone to confirm movement, to call corrections.
Instead, he relied on the rifle. At the tip of the barrel, a thin wind rod swayed subtly, responding to the air currents that curled along the riverbank. He adjusted slightly, barely a fraction, compensating for drift.
His scope settled on an elven hunter too exposed, counting on shadow and distance to conceal him. Under normal circumstances, that might have been enough. The new optics cut through darkness cleanly. The enchantments sharpened outlines, separating body from bark, movement from stillness. But there was a problem.
If he fired too precisely, too efficiently, the elves would know. The briefings had been explicit. Their night vision advantage was to remain concealed as long as possible. The surprise was worth more than a single clean kill.
So Tristain waited. The hunter drew, loosed an arrow, and shifted position.
Tristain exhaled.
He fired.
The first shot went wide, deliberately off by enough to seem careless. The bolt struck bark several meters from the target, scattering splinters.
A heartbeat later, he adjusted and fired again.
The second bolt punched clean through the elf’s upper torso. The hunter collapsed backward into shadow.
Tristain kept the scope steady for a moment longer, then shifted his position slightly, reassessing the opposite bank.
The correction had been minimal. The first round had gone where he told it to go. The second had gone exactly where it needed to.
He could see the difference immediately. Past one hundred and fifty meters, you compensated more by habit than by calculation. You aimed at an area and trusted probability to finish the job. The Needle Gun’s discharge was narrower and more stable. The lens array kept the beam coherent over longer distances.
He adjusted a fraction for wind, watching the thin rod at the barrel tip sway and settle.
A flare of white caught his eye.
An elven ballista discharged from deeper in the forest canopy, its enchanted bolt arcing out over the river. He tuned his scope and found it quickly. It was already taking sporadic fire from riflemen and heavy bolters on his side. Red ether discharges slammed into bark and timber, splintering trunks and sparking against the reinforced front shield mounted on the ballista’s frame.
The return fire was chaotic, and suppressive, hoping something landed. Behind the ballista, partially obscured by branches, sat a container of enchanted bolts.
He studied it briefly. Tactically, it was an obvious vulnerability. Ammunition clustered near artillery was always a risk. But the elves had little choice. The ballista was mounted high among the trees to gain elevation and angle over the river. Running ammunition from the forest floor would be slow, exposed, and inefficient under fire. So they accepted the danger.
He adjusted his aim. Remove the ammunition, and the ballista was useless. Even if the frame survived. He steadied the reticle on the container’s edge.
Wind minimal. Distance stable.
The Needle Gun’s discharge cut through the scattered suppression fire, a narrow line of focused ether. The bolt struck the case cleanly.
A heartbeat passed.
Then the ammunition ignited.
The scope flared white as the contained enchantments detonated in sequence. He eased back slightly while the blast tore through the mounting platform. Timber splintered. The forward shield sheared loose. The ballista’s frame collapsed into itself as fire ran through the branches.
Tristain settled back into position and resumed scanning the treeline.
It was tiring work, deliberately disguising precision. Every shot had to look incidental. Every correction had to appear imperfect. The illusion of randomness was as important as the kill.
For now, though, the uncertainty worked in his favor.
Destroying the ammunition rather than the frame forced adjustment. They would have to store bolts further back. Move them more cautiously. Expose more runners. Reposition more frequently. Even if they adapted, their artillery would lose freedom of movement and in a stalemate across a river, restriction was leverage.
Then Tristain ducked as shots starting landing nearby, looks like he’s been made, he let out a curse before hissing into his comms device and rolling into cover.
Displacing…
◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.♚.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦
Calen grimaced as he knelt along the broad branch, boots wedged against bark worn smooth by years of use. Things were not looking good. They had not been good since the war began.
He had lost six from his childhood circle already. Six faces that had once shared meals, training bruises, late night arguments about nothing. The group that had once filled a clearing with noise now fit into a single quiet memory.
Individually, he knew the truth. Elf against Imperial, skill for skill, they held the advantage. Better reflexes. Sharper senses. Years more training before a human even learned to hold a blade properly.
But war was not fought in duels. The Imperials had mass, depth and reserves. They absorbed losses the way a river absorbed stones. A man fell and another stepped into place. Lines held because there was always another line behind it.
The elves did not have that luxury.
Their lives were long, and so was the road to adulthood. A warrior was not made in a single season. It took decades to refine the body, longer still to discipline the mind. A full century, sometimes more, before one was considered truly mature.
Losing one was not a number, it was a century undone at the very least. The Imperials operated on a different scale. A human soldier could be trained in a year. Not perfected, but competent and above all replaceable. The Empire’s territory stretched wide, its cities dense with population. Every town could supply recruits. Every loss could be offset by another name entered into the rolls.
Calen drew and loosed a shot from his bow at a spraying heavy gun across the river. The arrow struck the front shield with a sharp crack, doing little damage but forcing the gunners to react. The weapon paused for a fraction of a second before its barrel shifted and a stream of red ether bolts tore toward his vague position in the canopy. Calen was already moving. He vaulted higher into the branches, boots barely grazing bark before pushing off again. The upper canopy swallowed him as thick, enchanted leaves absorbed most of the incoming discharge, the bolts flaring and dispersing as they slammed into layered foliage. Lower branches splintered under the impact, but he was no longer there.
The Imperials had mostly figured out by now that the canopy was excellent cover, and that was the elves’ greatest advantage in this fight. Their agility allowed them to move through branches with speed and precision, shifting position after every shot and retreating deeper into layered cover. The Imperials, by contrast, were constrained to the forest floor and a handful of static perches hacked into the trees. They had range and volume of fire. The elves had height, mobility, and a forest that had been shaped to favor them long before the war began.
Calen displaced again, bounding along the branches to a new position deeper in the canopy. He landed lightly, shifted his footing, and caught sight of an old friend settling onto a branch below him, already drawing and sighting in. Ether bolts slammed into the foliage around them, shredding leaves and splintering bark, but the elf held his aim steady. The Imperials were not always trying to hit something specific. Often they were simply trying to get lucky. It made a certain brutal sense. If you poured enough fire across the river, eventually something would connect.
His friend loosed an arrow and it struck home. Calen had just drawn breath to call out praise when an ether bolt hit him square in the chest.
The discharge punched clean through. A brief red flare, sparks, and the bolt exited his back in a spray of vaporized bark and blood. For a suspended instant, time seemed to thin. Calen saw his friend’s eyes widen, confusion overtaking focus. The smell of burnt flesh and ionized air reached him a heartbeat later.
Then the body tipped backward and fell from the branch.
Calen moved before the thought formed. He dropped after him, firing his grappling hook into a higher limb as he descended. The line snapped taut, swinging him inward. He caught his friend halfway down, wrapping an arm around the limp form as momentum pulled them into a controlled arc.
Ether bolts tore through the branches above, splintering wood where they had stood seconds earlier. Calen braced against the trunk, boots scraping bark, holding the cooling weight against him while the canopy shuddered under sustained fire.
“Eleron… Eleron,” Calen hissed, lowering them against the trunk.
He looked down.
There was a clean, fist sized hole through Eleron’s chest. The edges were blackened, cauterized by the ether discharge. Armor had not slowed it. It had passed straight through, neat and clinical, as if the body had simply made room for it.
Eleron had always gotten up. He had laughed through concussions, cursed through cracked bones, insisted he was fine when he clearly was not. Calen waited for that now.
For the familiar groan. The muttered complaint. The irritated shove that said, I’m not dead yet.
“Calen!” a voice called from above.
He looked up. Two of his compatriots clung to the higher branches, faces tight, bows half lowered as they took in the scene below. Their eyes dropped to the body in his arms. They did not speak. They did not need to. The pair exchanged a glance, then shook their heads slowly.
A bolt cracked overhead.
It missed them, but not by much. The discharge tore through leaves where they had been moments earlier, heat washing down through the canopy. Another shot punched sideways into a branch, splintering it into shards that rained past Calen’s shoulders.
The two above grimaced and dropped lower along the trunk, boots scraping bark as they shifted position. Another ether round sliced through the space they had just occupied, passing through empty air.
“We need to go, Calen,” one of them called down.
He tightened his grip on Eleron’s body, jaw set, about to snap something back.
The bolt hit first.
A red flash snapped through the rope above him. The grappling line parted instantly, for a split second, there was only weightlessness.
Then gravity returned, and Calen dropped.
He had just enough time to twist his shoulder inward before he and the body crashed through the lower branches. Twigs and leaves shattered around him as he tore through the canopy, bark scraping across armor.
He hit the undergrowth hard.
Air left his lungs in a violent rush as he rolled into ferns and loose soil, Eleron’s weight dragging him sideways. The canopy above erupted again with ether discharge, bolts punching through trees.
Whether it had been luck or deliberate precision, he did not know, but he leaned toward luck. If the Imperials were truly accurate enough to sever a moving rope in the middle of an exchange like that, they would not have wasted the shot on cordage. They would have put it through his spine, or his skull, and ended the matter cleanly.
He doubted the Imperials had meant to free him from the tree. They had simply been pouring fire into the canopy, this time it had found rope instead of flesh. He rolled onto his side in the undergrowth, dragging Eleron’s body in close as another ether bolt tore through brush nearby, the air stinging with heat and the sharp tang of ionized leaves.
Calen looked up through the fractured canopy and saw bolts streaking through the forest like red shooting stars, carving brief lines of heat across the darkness before vanishing into bark and leaf.
Then he noticed a soft glow drifting between the branches.
A light spirit. It floated hesitantly into view, faint and translucent, one of the lesser spirits bound to the forest itself. They were fragile things, tied to root and soil, unable to stray beyond the woodland’s reach. In bitter irony, it was these creatures who suffered most in the war. They could not flee. They could not fight. They endured.
The spirit hovered over Eleron’s body, its glow dimming as if in quiet recognition. For a moment it lingered there, suspended above the fallen elf, before its light thinned and faded back into the forest.
Calen’s jaw tightened.
He shifted and dragged Eleron behind thicker cover just as more ether bolts tore through the space he had occupied seconds earlier. Splinters and sparks rained down around him.
The spirits meant well. But in a battlefield like this, even a gentle glow might as well be a beacon that read: shoot here.
Calen exhaled slowly as he felt Eleron’s body cooling against him, the warmth draining away with quiet finality. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a thought stirred that he had no right to entertain in the middle of a firefight. He wondered whether that old ally, hidden near the Ancient Wood, would deign to intervene.
The figure had always been attuned to the spirits and to the land itself, able to coax light from roots and silence from wind. But he kept to himself, and for good reason. He was… different. Different in a way that drew scrutiny and aggression, heaven was on good terms with the Elves in the best of times but they would not be pleased to learn the elves were sheltering him.
The angels did not tolerate deviations from their doctrine. Variation made them uneasy. Orthodoxy was order, and order was control. The elves understood that. Their alignment with Heaven had always been more strategic than ideological. It offered protection, leverage, and legitimacy in a world increasingly dominated by power blocs.
But their debt to that old ally ran deeper than any strategic alignment.
Calen silently closed Eleron’s eyes and got ready to scale to the canopy again to continue the fight. But in the back of his mind he wondered.
How long before that old ally is forced to join the fray?
The Averlonian Empire will not give up any time soon…