With arrows and literal fire raining down upon them from up above, Kash's forces would not have an easy approach.
Gorgonbane positioned themselves at the east gate, the largest of the four. Ess had deposited Agrathor high upon a minaret, where he would have good vantage on the battle, and be able to call his lightning down on distant foes. Scythia had joined the honor guard that would protect the officers specifically, and she and Axebourne were already mounted and ready for action. Pierce had insisted on being atop the ramparts with the common soldiers, and he waited impatiently there with the rest of the troops.
The attack began with a rumbling in the ground, and Pierce's heart sunk as his intuition proved right once again. Muffled cracks sounded from unknown points of origin, and the buildings of the city groaned in protest. The cracking sounds grew in volume and frequency, soon punctuated by pops and the snapping of wooden beams. The people of Grondell looked all around, realizing that the sounds of structural failure were coming from everywhere at once.
"Get down off the wall!" Pierce heard himself yelling even as he ran. The men and women nearby did not hesitate to obey, and began evacuating the ramparts, quickly joined by others. A signal sounded from down below - Axebourne had just ordered the retreat Pierce had already started. Likely Scythia had sensed it coming.
The city wall's golden enchantment flared in activation as the stresses from the ground beneath it began to push at wood frames and stone blocks. The portion of the ramparts Pierce had been stationed on bent and swelled upward, blocks losing contact with each other, sliding up or out. Those left on the ramparts lost their footing. Some slipped and fell. The base of the wall was lifted off the ground, sand and rocks falling away from the partially buried stone. Bodies fell in the midst of the wreckage, screams cut short as they impacted the ground. A pillar of blackness appeared among the dust and rock, its tip pushed up at the wall. A second pillar, and another appeared. Five of them, then ten. Pierce dared to come closer and take a look.
The pillars were not of stone, but of flesh, scarred black masses that brought to mind... No... In his shock he couldn't accept it, and he began to back away. It was the same rough, oily skin as a Monstrosity. These were fingers, but each was the size of a temple's column. Something gigantic was burrowing up from below. It was far more dramatic, and oddly more simple, than what Pierce had initially imagined.
"Monstrosity!" someone cried, and the defenders were thrown into a panic, rushing away and into the streets between buildings that were still shuddering and cracking.
Pierce forced himself into focus and took stock of the situation, scanning the city wall as it curved toward the east gate and beyond. There were more black hands, impossibly huge, pushing up at the wall, tossing whole sections of it aside and sweeping away any remaining rubble. There was a wrist, a forearm, an elbow. The arm bent, muscles straining as the subterranean creature began to pull itself out of the hole it must have dug. Or maybe they were one with the earth in some strange way.
Loose portions of the ground near where the wall had been slid into the void the Monstrosity was evacuating. People were screaming as more of the mega-giants began to emerge, forming a wall of horrid flesh where once there had been one of blessed stone.
Pierce turned again and dashed toward the first hand he'd seen, drawing his sword in a flash of blue. The giant was now visible up to the elbows, seeking purchase on open ground. Pierce let loose his battle cry and swiped viciously at the hard, black flesh. His bone-melter blazed and cut easily into the huge appendage, severing muscle and tendon, the slightest contact beginning to melt bone so that it flowed out of the gash along with the thing's black blood.
He hadn't severed the arm clear through, so he struck again and again, skirting around its circumference, and the arm crashed to the ground like a felled tree, but twitched as the last bits of its weird life ran their course. Stone from the uprooted wall fell from the dead hand's fingers, smashing into the ground like hammers as Pierce dodged out of the way.
He found himself thinking back to the sculpture of the Blacksmith in the depths of the Everlasting Temple. That hammer falling, again and again.
These Monstrosities were far bigger.
The giant's other arm swung toward him blindly. It was too long. He wouldn't be able to dodge. He braced himself to be crushed.
The massive forearm flinched, fingers splaying, an instant before the lightning was visible. It was like something exploded beneath the dark flesh, so fiercely as to split the arm in two. Pierce heard a distant echo of Agrathor's voice, screaming something unintelligible. More lightning followed, cracking and ripping down from above, thrumming up from the ground below. Pierce danced away from the growing wall of mega-Monstrosities to form up with the rest of the defenders.
Another horn signal sounded. It seemed too soon in a battle for this, but looking down the line of the ruined wall, Pierce had to agree it was the right call. The defenders began to retreat toward the city center. The Temple had to be defended.
Agrathor looked down on the destruction from his perch upon the minaret. The dozens of Monstrosities, bigger than any he'd ever seen, reared up out of the ground all along the city wall. As he tried to understand the situation, he continued to call lightning down on their heads, their reaching limbs. The mega-Monstrosities did not chase the garrison troops in retreat, but continued to sweep their arms about,
