The giants were every bit as nasty as their smaller counterparts, with hard to resolve features scarred as with fire, sparse hair and scraggly beards still wet with muck from the Underlands. Their deep-set eyes were clouded beyond recognition of color.
They formed an oppressive wall, clearly to keep the Grondellites within the city's confines. It was a cruel joke, supplanting the ramparts and inverting their function.
If they weren't here to attack, what were they going to do?
Some of the mega-Monstrosities seemed to realize who was responsible for the rending bolts of lightning, and began to throw huge blocks of stone at Agrathor's perch. Agrathor did not panic, managing to blow a few blocks into pieces with lightning from his spear. Ultimately, he knew the minaret would not withstand this assault, and he vaulted down to the ground dozens of feet below, relishing the shudder the impact sent reverberating through his bones. The top few floors of the tower came crashing down behind him, wrecked by a volley of stone from the giants.
The garrison soldiers were in retreat, and Agrathor caught sight of the kid.
"Pierce," he yelled. The kid caught sight of him and they fell into step. "Go back and take out a few of those scum-suckers?"
Pierce shook his head, continuing to jog up the street, "I want to, believe me, Agrathor. But you can tell they're up to something. This isn't the whole of it."
"I can see that," Agrathor snapped, but he didn't argue.
Up ahead, Grondellites were fleeing from something, pushing against the flow of the retreat.
Behind them, a row of apartments lifted off the ground and fell apart, wreckage spilling into the street. Dozens of people were crushed, their sounds of terror silenced. In place of the apartment building was a twisted obelisk, rising from the ground. Something like heat waves shimmered across its spiral-ridged surface.
Better wreck it, Pierce thought.
"That seems like a good thing to stop," he called over to Agrathor, who nodded and gritted his teeth. They rushed forward together, barrelling through slower people toward their goal. The minor injuries of bystanders were insignificant before the unknown purpose of this ebony monolith.
Other buildings were falling, being supplanted, and obelisks rose all around. Pierce saw Ess hovering above the crowd, arms outstretched. Her floating liquid orbs glowed like magma, and they shot back and forth through an obelisk's mass in wild patterns, punching holes until it lost integrity and began to crumble.
"Let's do what she did!" Pierce called out. "I'll take the far side!"
"Yah!" said Agrathor. Pierce didn't know what he meant by that, but the skeleton man dashed toward the obelisk, brandishing his sparking spear.
Agrathor plunged his weapon into the base of the obelisk with a crunch that sent a fissure running up its brittle surface. Pierce let his sword bite into the black stone, drawing it around the obelisk's circumference to create a deep incision. On the far side of the thing he stopped and began hacking at the stone like a woodsman felling a tree.
Agrathor roared, channeling electricity through his spear and into the core of the obelisk. The brittle stone couldn't handle the heat and pressure, cracks radiated out to the obelisk's surface, and a section of it blew out in hot, ragged chunks that pummeled Pierce's armor. The obelisk began to topple, and Pierce and Agrathor screamed for people to flee. It came to the ground with a resounding boom, crushing the remains of the building it had supplanted before splintering into countless shards.
Pierce and Agrathor dashed madly for the next obelisk. Above and beyond them, Ess too had chosen a second target. Small gangs of the city's mages had formed up and hurled fire, lightning and shockwaves at the wicked-looking obelisks, taking down their fair share. But like the mega-Monstrosities at the outer wall, the obelisks cropped up all across the city, too fast to keep up with.
The ones that reached their full height began to hum. It was a low-pitched drone that resonated in the buildings all around. Pierce could feel it in his gut. It buzzed in his skull. He could only imagine how Agrathor must feel, with no meat to dull the vibrations.
"We can't keep up with them!" Agrathor shouted to him in frustration as they toppled a second obelisk and fled before its collapse. "Even Ess can't be everywhere at once!"
Pierce huffed, too busy to agree, but Agrathor was right. How long had it even been since the attack began? And the city was already in a shambles, its garrison routed. They needed a dozen Esses, two dozen Agrathors to even have a chance at survival.
"Might as well join up with the others!" Agrathor hollered.
Pierce raised a hand and made a forward chopping motion, as he'd seen Scythia and Axebourne do before.
"That means, 'fire at will,'" Agrathor said, a laugh crouched in his voice.
"Sorry," Pierce puffed. "Thought it meant, 'go ahead.'"
"We'll get you sorted out after this, kid," Agrathor said, seemingly unwinded. "Probably should have taught you the signals before we got here anyway," he mused.
Ess caught sight of them as she cruised overhead, and began to fly parallel to them, her fiery orbs destroying every obelisk they passed. It wasn't enough. The more there were, the more horrible the drone was. People were falling to their knees in the streets, voiding their stomachs and retching helplessly. Some were crushed by falling debris.
"We need to get to Scythia!" Ess cried down to them. She looked at Agrathor. She seemed to expect him to know why. He shook his helmeted skull. "The Amulet of Silence!" she yelled.
Agrathors flaming eyes brightened with remembrance.
"What does it do?" Pierce asked between breaths.
"Seriously kid?" Agrathor retorted. Pierce would have shrugged, but his body was busy running. "She uses it for infiltration, cancels out all sound in an area. Ess can amplify the field, keep us all safe!"
"Can
