Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

Chapter 71: LXXI. The Shieldwall

"Hel... help me! It hurts!" said the warrior as soon as he was struck by the arrow.

Aslan approached him, pulling the arrow from his body and using one of his healing skills.

"Silence!" said Dag, nodding to the comrades behind him.

Focusing on the sound, he was able to realize that the enemies were right behind the doors.

"They're here, back down. They could hit us with more arrows" he continued.

The group of warriors obeyed without discussion.

Dag heard a noise of flintlocks: the enemies were setting a fire.

Before he could explain to others what he had just heard, the sky above their heads lit up in red. A rain of fiery arrows was about to fall down on them.

"Shield Waaall!" shouted Dag, moving toward the door to shield himself from the attack.

Some of the warriors raised their shields, but others were hit and fell to the ground as their bodies began to burn.

Panic broke out.

Although they were all trained warriors, few of them had already participated in a real war. Dag wasn't one of them either.

Suddenly, a heavy blow moved the iron door and the beam that holding it bent slightly, then returned to its original position.

"It's a battering ram! They want to break through the door!" said one of the warriors with the shield.

Aslan managed to move the body of the stricken boy to a safe area and within minutes he treated him, partially healing the wound.

"We need to reinforce it!" shouted Dag.

"The heaviest of us must go behind the door! The others will follow me!" he continued.

More reinforcements continued to arrive from the dormitory to the west wing.

Dag climbed a wooden staircase leading to the top of the walls, where there were some observation towers.

"Archers! Get on!" he yelled.

Some of the warriors followed him. Among them were two women, armed with a bow and arrows.

Once they arrived on the observation towers, they began to attack the enemies.

The enemy troop was numerous, but less than the one Dag had crossed before on the main street, which would have entered through the main entrance.

"Focus on those who push the ram!" yelled Dag, who had now taken control of his troop.

The archers of his Clan, despite the numerical inferiority, were advantaged in the position: the towers were equipped with special firing positions, repaired both above and at the sides.

One by one, they struck all the warriors pushing the ram, while from the back rows of the enemy troop, fiery arrows continued to be fired across the walls.

Fortunately, most of the warriors protecting the west wing, finding themselves in close contact with the door to withstand the ram, were not hit by the subsequent waves of arrows.

"Keep it up! They can't last much longer!" yelled Dag, who, meanwhile, from the top of the walls, tried to look at the other entrances of the temple, wondering if Egill and Dargeon had as many reinforcements.

The enemies continued to die under the arrows of the Clan archers when Dag looked better at them: from behind came two men and a woman, without armor.

The men were bare-backed, and so was the woman, with a headband covering her breasts.

"Dag! Who... who are they? Those men... and the woman... What are they doing?!" asked one of the archers next to him. She was a Clan's girl. Dag had seen her before: the first time he entered the Temple courtyard, she was practicing Thunder Clap, showing her progress at the Masters.

Dag didn't imagine she was so good with the bow.

"I don't know! But nothing good! Stay alert!" he replied.

Just after being distracted, turning to Dag in search of words of comfort, the girl was struck by an arrow in the face, splashing blood on Dag, who remained motionless.

"Fuck! Fuck!" he yelled, recovering from the fright.

If he had remained motionless, the next victim of the enemy archers would have been him.

He lowered himself, looking at those two men and that woman.

All three began to scream: a vortex of water began to envelop them.

"Keep shooting! Don't stop! Aim for those three!" shouted Dag to the remaining archers on the walls.

The archers immediately pointed to the three men wrapped in the vortex of water and set fire.

Immediately the water stopped and fell to the ground, revealing the mutation that the three enemies had undergone: their bodies were now completely covered with green scales and tails popped up from behind.

Their faces were also no longer human, but more like reptiles.

"Jormungandr..." thought Dag, realizing what was going on before his eyes.

He remembered seeing illustrations of the World Serpent when he was on Earth. Its appearance was very similar to what the enemies had taken.

The only characteristic that made the woman different from the two men was the size: after the transformation, she was slightly smaller than them.

The largest of them grabbed the arrow that was about to hit him with his tail: with a quick twist, he raised the arrow towards the archer who had shot it, hitting him in the head, with inhuman precision.

Soon after, the man yelled again at Dag and his companions: this time the scream was a roar.

"Noo!" shouted the allied archers, after witnessing another killing.

"Don't give up! We must defend the Temple, otherwise, it will be the end for all!" continued Dag, trying to boost the morale of his troop.

The three reptilians bent over, loading the momentum on their knees.

Suddenly, they sprinted toward the iron door of the Temple: hitting it simultaneously with shoulder pads, the beam that kept the door closed shattered and the door opened, causing all the warriors behind it to fall.

Many of the allied warriors began to scream in panic, after seeing the reptilians up close.

Before Dag could get off the walls, enemies began to hit his fallen allies with their claws, killing them.