Boss

"Loose!", yelled Yilie the moment that The Iron Ram had come into range. What semblance of organization that remained within our ranks fired a volley of arrows downwards at the approaching Earth Kingdom dreadnought, but as had been done before, the attacks were repelled with ease, the on-board benders creating yet another dome of solidified rock and dirt, using it to protect their vessel, rendering our efforts useless. Yilie, however, showed no intention of giving them any ground, and so, unphased, he prepared the second volley.

"Nock!" The soldiers nocked their arrows.

"Draw!" The soldiers drew their bows, ready to fire. I readied my own crossbow, preparing my aim towards a ballistae operator, not that it would do much.

"Loose!" The soldiers loosened their arrows, as did I. Once more, like rain drops against the earth, our arrows became sticks, falling upon an uncaring enemy.

The fear in the soldiers around us was apparent now, but for the time being at the very least, their fear of Yilie was still greater. And so, they nocked once more, they drew once more, but before they could loose, the speed of the Earth Kingdom solders proved superior, and they deployed yet another barrage of ammunition earthen disks, flaming boulders, and even some arrows, killing an indeterminate number of our troops, and injuring a just as unknown number, but their opening gave us one as well, so what few of us had stood our ground, fired.

The earthbenders were unable to raise their defenses in a timely enough matter to deflect our volley this time, and a good amount of our arrows struck home, but the prompt revival of the earth dome shrouded our desired assessment of the damage we dealt. This time, the dome didn't lower. It remained in place, above The Iron Ram. They'd weakened us more than sufficiently. All they needed do was close the distance between us, and they'd be more than ready to finish off our crumbling defenses. Yilie could see this much as well. "Switch to close range weapons! Ready the burning oil! Evacuate tunnels C and D below us and prepare the charges for said tunnels."

"The charges?" I turned to ask him. "They'll enter through the lower tunnels instead of risking their way to attack us through here. Once they do, we'll blow the tunnels to kingdom come and hopefully bury a few of the bastards with them."

I nodded. A sound enough plan despite the fact that they were earthbenders. Our only hope would come in the explosions killing them their selves.

"How far do the charges go?"

"Bombs are planted in every wall of the castle including this very tunnel. I'm prepared to reduce this place to slag if it means stopping the enemy's advance."

We were surrounded by blasting jelly, these walls just waiting to cave in on us, and so they would if we didn't stop the enemy here and now. If ever there was incentive to fight, this was it.