Everything paused for a moment with the death of the shaman. Orcs for a hundred yards seem to all acknowledge the passing of a war leader. Those immediately around him rose their heads to the sky and howled at the sky. It was a hideous chorus of howls, but it even made us pause for a moment. We had killed someone of some significance. This was clearly a loss that the enemy had to stop and mourn for a few seconds.

  The shaman might be dead, but we still had bigger problems to worry about: specifically truck sized with eight legs. There were also more orcs advancing. They were forced to climb over or go around their own dead, but they were still coming forward. We were no longer rolling in reverse. Joe was up on the wall of a house making liberal use of his spider climbing wand. He was shooting over the heads of the orcs though. From my angle I couldn’t tell what he was shooting at. All I knew is that either it was taller than an Orc or way off to be firing at that angle.

  Brett looked exhausted. He was no longer using his lightning abilities, as he was just helping take care of injured at this point. I could see that he and his twin sister were going through the potions and cookie reserves slowly but surely. They might be overusing them, but they were keeping our actual casualties down. We had only three guys die so far. For some reason that felt like a minor victory considering the number of dead bodies on the other side. The downside was that they could replenish their numbers, while we could not.

  Ted threw the last of his pearls, the biggest of the bunch, and the awesome destruction of hurricane powered water cut down another grouping of orcs. Ted was probably responsible for more kills than almost everyone else combined today. I was glad I had that item, and I had more to identify, but it was hard to tell what the best use of my time in this moment was.

  I looked around more and saw Nora trying to judiciously use her wand of force bolt to kill leaders. It did a lot of damage to an individual, so sniping made sense. As soon as she caught my eye she jogged over to me, “Neal, watcha thinking?”

  “That Billy’s desk job looks really nice about now.” I forced a laugh at my own bad joke. “So how many scrolls have you used?”

  “Nine so far. Those are the majority of the pure combat scrolls. But at least I got to cast Fireball. Chris would be jealous.”

  I smirked back at her, “Why yes he would be, but he’d also love that it was used quite perfectly. The devastation within the space was rather impressive.”

  “What are those water pearls Ted is throwing?

  “An elemental variant of fireball. It reminds me of some sort of necklace of missiles. It was pretty nice to have in my stack of unidentified items.”

  “Why do you even have a stack of unidentified items?”

  “I get busy, and it gets pushed to the bottom of the list. I tend to keep my mana available during the day additional uses of assess.”

  “How often do you really run out of free uses of Assess?”

  “Is this really the conversation we should be having in the middle of a gun fight?”

  “No, but you will answer that question later.”

  “Only if we live long enough for you to remind me of the question later.” She then turned her back to me and pulled out another scroll. At least no one was going to accuse her of holding back from using all available options. I think I am going to forget about that thought, because that was her point with the unidentified items.

  I felt a tap on the shoulder before I could move to anything else. I turned to see Vern with a bandaged arm. “What the hell Vern? I don’t want to see you in combat.”

  “You should ask the orcs that decided I was an easy target. I’ll be okay. Brittney patched me right up. However, I need to level along side Will. We need someone to cover for the kid on the 50 caliber.”

  I nodded and looked around for Frank. He was looting a few orcs, presumably for potions. Probably not the worst idea for someone to think about in an ongoing fight. I Shouted, “Frank!”

  Surprisingly, even over the din of combat, that should have deafened me by now, he must have heard me. He turned towards me from where he was kneeling over an orc. I motioned him over with my free hand. As soon as he got to me I simply said, “Take over for Will on the 50 caliber.” The smile Frank gave to that command was the kind that almost made me feel sorry for the orcs.

  I wanted to know where my reinforcements were at, but I knew they were at least 5 minutes out. To get here faster would have required breaking the speed limit by more than I was sure some of those vehicles could manage. As soon as they got here we could push back on offense.

  Then the ground shook. I looked towards the orcs, but I couldn’t see anything large enough to shake the ground. The ground shook again. I started looking at the closest side street, but there was nothing there that could do this. Next was a persistent rumbling that was first to my north, ahead of me, and then to my west in the middle of several row houses. The orcs didn’t look confused, which was definitely a bad sign. They did all seem to brace themselves behind cover. They clearly knew something we didn’t. Shooting had died down as the number of targets was reduced from all the hiding behind cover. Frank looked and his gun sounded like nothing had changed. He was aiming and firing downfield at the partially visible spider creature. He was hitting it dead on center despite the kickback and nature of the gun to not stay on a point perfectly.

  A building down the left side of the street collapsed. Dust and debris flew into the sky adding a hazy filter to anyone looking in that general direction. The walls mostly fell straight down on themselves. It was like a controlled demolition, but without explosives. The orcs cheered at the destruction of the building. Oh, they definitely knew something.

  From the middle of the rubble clouded in aforementioned dust rose the head of a snake. It began slithering what sounded like words. The orcs looked at it and then at us, and then started charging in droves. We had them held back up to that point, but that idea was about to be tested. The shield bearers, having recovered from the fight against enlarged abyssal orcs, who had been beaten to a pulp by giant summoned tentacles, now found themselves being rushed by well over a hundred orcs. What they couldn’t accomplish in bits in and pieces, the orcs were trying to resolve through wave tactics.

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  We didn’t have the bodies to effectively repel them either. Soldiers lobbed grenades far over the heads of the shielders in the hopes of taking out clusters of orcs, but such a tactic only seemed to delay or slightly injure the orcs. Their resistance was becoming problematic. We had exhausted what little enchanted ammo we had, so it was now a matter of hitting them with as much concentrated firepower as possible. The wave tactic was stressing each and every bit of options we had. The surging orcs caused the 50 caliber gunners to target more of the horde and less on the giant snake monster or the spider. This was apparently the goal the snake was going for. I watched helplessly as it plucked the gunner out of the stalled Humvee. The beast clamped down hard enough to rip the man from his spot, body intact. It tipped it’s head back showing off some wicked fangs, before swallowing the man whole.

  That particular experience made my stomach turn, and in looking at Will and Vern near me, their stomachs were turning as well. It was worse for them as they were in the middle of eating snacks. Vern kept his food in, but Will did not. Vomit spewed onto the ground directly in front of him. I turned back towards the snake to avert my eyes from the puking, only to have the damn thing wink at me. It was toying with us. I had no genuine way to bring it down. The instant Nora used her wand on it, she would be targeted. I knew that, and I bet she knew that better than I did.

  We kept fighting the current wave of orcs. I added in shots where I could, but from where I was, the angles weren’t great. Joe still had his feet perpendicularly to the second story of a house and was firing at something we couldn’t see. It worried me more than just a little bit that he continued to shoot at something that was not an immediate concern; especially when we had plenty of immediate concerns.

  The giant spider started moving forward, picking its way across abandoned cars and rubble up the side of the road opposite the giant snake. The front line of the orcs fell back and for a moment I thought that we might have broken them. I was missing something. My eyes flashed back and forth between the Snake and the spider, both creatures were huge, but there was something happening. I didn’t know what it was exactly, but the snake was activating an ability. I shouted at the men to “pull back,” but it was all too late. The snake opened its mouth wide and spewed a greenish-blue substance on all our shield bearers. I watched ten men that had performed admirably all day long start screaming in agony. Their shields melted before the breath attack had even finished, then their clothes stuck to them as skin melted. Skin softened to a consistency between Jello pudding and Play-Doh. Bones were exposed, the screams shut off as lungs melted away. They weren’t puddles, but camo, flesh, and bone lumps in a puddle of acid that burned through the layers of asphalt.

  We had to pull back, but there didn’t seem to be an easy way to do so. I simply shouted, “FALL BACK!,” as if that would somehow cause an orderly withdrawal. Our militia nature showed itself finally. We were good in shooting at the enemy, and they had worked hard to get headshots nine times out of ten, but orderly withdrawal where soldiers covered each other one after the other was not a skill we would have even started to learn, much less master. Panic slowly set in as everyone started running. The 50 caliber gunners remaining were trying to cover for all the guys on foot, but there just weren’t enough machine guns to cover everyone. Someone had the presence of mind to rig up the immobilized Humvee to explode, but we were still in well inside the blast radius.

  Vern stumbled, but Will helped him back to his feet. And then I heard two screams behind me. One of my nightmares was being realized. The snake creature was slowly swallowing Brett whole. He made exaggerated mouth movements to emphasize the joy of eating a child whole. Brett was the first scream. Then there was Brittney struggling against Nora to chase after her brother crying and screaming his name. She was the second scream.

  My legs moved before my brain did any thinking. I ran straight at the snake creature. I had to make a leap to clear the ever sinking puddle of acid. I was met by an Orc smiling viciously at me, like I was easy prey. I might be, but I was angry enough over the loss of a kid that we had taken care of for five days. He was barely thirteen years old. He deserved better. I still had enchanted ammo, and damnit I was going to use it now. I pulled the trigger repeatedly to unload close to a dozen bullets in the orc in rapid succession. His expression at the multiple bleeding chest wounds was one of surprise. I dodged past him filled to the brim on adrenaline. I was in the line of fire from the 50 caliber guns, and I felt the bullets whizzing by me to my left and right. I just hoped that they didn’t slip at all while aiming around me. I unloaded the rest of my rounds at the very large body of the snake, certain that these were but paper cuts to it. Somehow, though I don’t entirely remember how, I dropped the rifle and pulled my enchanted combat knives that were belted at my waist. I jumped onto the snake’s front knives ready to sink in like climbing spikes.

  Things didn’t go as planned. Immediately after the triumph of landing the daggers cleanly through its scales, it twisted its body violently to expel me from it. I wanted to say I was like a bull rider, and I achieved a full eight seconds of glory, but that would be a fat lie. My eyes went black momentarily only to open what I presumed was a few seconds later sprawled on Joe as he was virtually plastered to the side of the building. We started sliding down the wall, and I could hear the rubber in his shoes squeaking as we quickly half-slid yet half-fell our way to ground level. My ass hit the ground at about the same time his shoes did. “Did that work?,” I asked.

  “No.” was all Joe said. More was said in his wistful half smile than whatever minimal words he would say. I hoped the expression was suggesting that I probably deserved points for trying.

  We got up, Joe really fast while I took several more seconds. The closest Humvee was over fifteen feet behind us. The noise from the machine guns was deafening to the point of my ears bleeding. Fortunately, those guns were aimed at the orcs streaming directly for us. We both fled; I took a ground only route while Joe decided to run up a building to get away from their infantry. I did not know what became of Brett, but I was guessing he was gone. I was to blame for bringing a thirteen year old into a war zone. I should never let them get this close to the action.

  I didn’t have many thoughts running through my head, just guilt. Guilt that I got kids killed. Guilt that I got adults killed. Guilt was there even after the adrenaline wore off. Guilt wouldn’t let me stop until I was back behind multiple Humvees again. As I caught up to everyone, I realized that despite our disorganization with falling back we were still doing a good job of covering each other. We were down by just under a third of our force not counting Brett, but those remaining seemed to keep their legs moving and guns shooting at the enemy. In this moment, there was nothing more I could ask of them.

  The snake creature was yelling something at the orcs, and I still wish I knew their language. More importantly, it was doing all this while ensconced on top of the wrecked Humvee loaded with explosives. He clicked something in his hands and the snake went in several directions simultaneously. The explosion was immense; the force of the blast tripped me and several others despite us being way beyond the expected blast radius. Everyone and everything was covered in snake bits for well over a hundred feet. As bad as we fared from the explosion the orcs fared far worse. Many of them were just gone. I really needed to how much C-4 was packed in the vehicle. Thankfully the explosion bought us time. I looked for Joe and the Spider only to spot the spider climbing over the tops of a building chasing after Joe. I hope he is all right, but the rest of us needed to keep moving.

  There would be no attempt to recover Brett’s body. The exploding snake creature was the best homage we could pay him and his passing under the circumstances.