Chapter 8.5 - Hold the Line

Haven's QRF Team, or Quinn's Royal Flyers, arrived. Flightpacks kept them aloft as the team split up, continuing to stop the advance, only this time with a hail of gunfire.

They were immediately routed by enemy fliers.

Thankfully, the QRF Fliers had arrived before the naval groups, as Quinn's Flyers were able to actively combat the enemy flyers with both sword and rifle. Had it been a Skygge Patrol Team or one of the larger naval groups that was not as mobile, their ships would have been torn to pieces.

Serin was reviewing everything that was happening, and he realized that his paranoia was now justified. It seemed the enemy had prepared a countermeasure to all of the forces of Haven that were known prior to Haven becoming isolationist.

The enemy had produced specialized troops for their invasion: grotesque bone flyers, giant bulbous heaps of human crawling out of the gate, quadrupedal monstrosities crawling up the sides of collapsed buildings. These were all enemies his spy had not seen in person but had read redacted reports for, passing what information he could. He was aware that the enemy had used their blood magic to turn humans into monsters. Nighmora, and by extension Haven, was surprised at how far the enemy had gone to destroy the non-human defilers of the Haven.

When the enemy has determined that you are the ultimate evil, any action taken to stop you is considered an act of good.

Serin was watching the battle play out. His full second perimeter was setup, and the enemy gate was fully encircled, but this only stopped the ground troops. The large flesh giants were soaking up bolter rounds, acting as moving siege units. They were slow, but if they reached the second perimeter line, they would break it. The third team was perimeter was not in place yet, and would take several hours.

Serin looked over to Edel. "Send in the DragonBane team"

***

Having a dragon preserve next to populated areas did not come without its extra efforts. Yes, it led to having the Thulian Dragonriders, but it also led to every region needing a DragonBane Team.

This team excelled at one task, trapping and removing dragons from an active engagement area. Mostly trained in subduing and extracting. Alive or dead, they were meant to safeguard the population from runaway young dragons. But worst case scenario, and after the issue with Reginald the Red, They had tools to deal with adult dragons as well. The DragonBane team had been working to evacuate civilians when their leader, Dao, received a message from the War Council.

He looked at his team, "We are being called. Our assignments are to latch and pin the flesh giants athat have arrived. Red, your team take the north section. Naught, your team will take the South East. Bran, the South West." The three Lieutenants nodded and with their teams set off.

The flesh giants were slow, but they were powerful, and each shot they absorbed was one more that was not fired at the ground troops. The Second line of soldiers was ordered to focus fire on the smaller targets.

The flesh giants, realizing the enemy wasn't firing at them began to move a bit quicker.

Until several barbed harpoons pierced them from above.

The harpoons were designed to completely pierce the body of a dragon, and then fold out, anchoring into it. It seemed that it worked just as well on the flesh giants.

The giants thrashed but could not remove the anchors, and continued to trudge forward. That was until the other half of the anchor was attached to its drag line.

The drag line was pulled by a specially made scout ship. Normally they would attach the drag line to a bigger ship to lift the dragon and carry it away, but there was no time. Instead this ship, travelling at a faster than its larger brethren ship, pulled the anchor and link taut.

Flesh Giant, Anchor, Linkage, and Ship. one of these would not survive.

One of these was not made of adamantine.

The Anchors pulled the flesh giants, and with the massive size of these monsters, instead of being pulled into the sky, their torsos were ripped apart.

With the Bone Flyers unable to provide aerial support due to suppression and Quinn's flyers, and the flesh giants being destroyed faster than they could come through, the area was freed up for the sweep and clear operations.

The Sobaka Battalion had arrived. A few thousand Forged, their Crystals placed not into the bipedal forms of humanoids, but instead put into large quadrupedal metal bodies that resembled large wolves with oversized jaws. They leapt over the perimeter and got to work.

The cult's magics were highly effective against living tissue, in fact the magics they had been using against Haven were so well tailored to organic enemies that if it made contact with the skin, caused serious damage, and in weaker opponents instant death.

Blood magic had no effect on bodies made of adamantium and mithril.

The 'war hounds' as they were referred to had a special function. Inside the back of their mouths were a specialized hopper for magical chokers. So as the warhounds would jump in and attack, they would clamp down on the neck and secure a collar on an enemy combatant, then they would drag the enemy behind Haven's perimeter, where waiting teams cast [stasis] on them and threw them into the waiting inventory of one of the backline mages.

These collars stopped blood magic and self immolation. The war hounds were trained well in this task. Without their access to these abilities, the enemy combatants were just slightly strong humans.

It was not that the Cult hadn't thought about these collars. The cult was aware that these collars existed, and their counter had been the power to melt the flesh of organics that attempted to collar them. If someone could not get near enough to put it on, then they couldn't be stopped.

However, in a slight error on tactical judgement, the caustic magics of the cult were ineffective against the metal bodies of the warhounds. It was the perfect designed form of the Forged. However, there was an issue with the Warhound design. For every part added to a homunculi, something had to be taken away. To add the intricate collar hopper to the neck of the homunculi, the homunculi had to give up much of its ability to vocalize. So while they were intelligent plated members of Haven, they were incapable of speech. Instead, they could howl, a warcry of metallic cacophony that filled the sky.

As the enemy watched their berserker troops being picked off, collared, and dragged from the battlefield, they began to slow their advance and group up. The sky was beginning to fill with thousands of bone flyers and Quinn's Team was unable to keep up with the enemy, and would soon have to retreat. Serin was aware that the enemy could not take air superiority though. It would spell disaster for the city as even now, hundreds of bone flyers were escaping the perimeter and heading towards the areas where the civilian populations were retreating.

War is Chaos. Thankfully, Quinn's flyers had bought enough time, as the Thulian dragon riders arrived.

They were not able to engage the ground forces as planned, however the dragons, tugging their floating personnel carriers, encircled the battlefield. While the smaller riderless dragons were sent in to kill anything else with wings, the dragon FPCs (floating personnel carriers) were used as mobile gun batteries, firing automatic fire into swarms of bone flyers. Their gun platforms fired smaller projectiles but they fired from multiple barrels, as their goal was to pepper the sky with fire, and even if they couldn't kill the bone flyers, their fleshy wings were being torn asunder, causing the enemy to crash to the ground.

Serin was watching the forces, "Dana, what is the status for our call to our allies?"

"They aren't coming."

Serin stood shocked.

"They are all under attack."

***