The Unwilling Protagonist

Chapter 39: The Reluctant Sun and The Talented Magician

The dwarven siege engines slowly moved forward as they prepared their cannons. The generals of the five armies prepared themselves to charge into the kingdom when the time came.

"Alright, just as we discussed." Org'gax said, "You open up those gates, and we storm through."

"Of course." Karl replied before turning to Rathe, "General, why don't you signal the dragon riders to attack first? Have them soften up their defenses."

Rathe signaled the dragon riders to being their attack. Any havoc they wreaked on the kingdom would make the coming attack much easier.

The dragons flew under the gray sky of the cloud that covered the kingdom, before they could start their assault, however...

A large ballista bolt flew at the lead dragon; they promptly dodged it, but now the entire dragon rider army found themselves assaulted with a wall of the giant arrows. The riders and their dragons took evasive action as they moved out of the way of the attacks. Less agile dragons were easily impaled by the bolts and some unfortunate riders were precisely sniped off of their dragons.

"The tower! It's coming from that tower!" One rider shouted.

The dragon riders rethought their strategy and focused their attention on the giant tower in the middle of the city. They were having a hard enough time as is to dodge the bolts from afar; it only got worse as they moved closer. Some dragons managed to get close enough to incinerate the tower's battlements with their flames, but that barely deterred the attacks they received.

"What's going on?" Rathe observed from afar.

"The dragons are being forced to retreat!" Iradin pointed out with concern.

Sure enough, the dragon riders, already suffering massive losses, were flying away from the kingdom as they looked for a safe place to land. Everyone could see the dark streaks of the ballista bolts firing on the dragons.

"Bah! We'll handle this now!" Karl said, "Move the siege engines forward!"

The siege engines fared slightly better than the dragons did. The ballista bolts launched from the tower harmlessly bounced off their hard, mithril exteriors with loud clangs, at most deafening the dwarves inside with the resonance. Soon, the ballista bolts stopped raining down...But then a burning bolt impacted next to a siege engine and then exploded. The fiery explosion disabled the wheels on the machine and lit it on fire. Panicked dwarves scrambled out of the burning wreck as Tower used this new strategy on the remaining siege engines, effectively destroying them all.

Karl stared at the scene in utter disbelief. The siege engines which took months of forging and constructing were destroyed in a matter of seconds. The retreating dwarves were spared from the tower's mercilessness as they ran with smoke on their faces and burnt beards.

"Bah! Forget this!" Org'gax shouted as he raised his sword high.

"Org'gax! Don't!" Iradin said, "It's obvious that that tower is the source of those attacks. If you were to charge now, you'd be leading your army into a massacre."

"And you're saying what we just witnessed wasn't?!" Karl fumed. His pride was shattered at the loss of his siege engines.

"We'll just attack from afar using the trebuchets and go from there..."

Karl sighed in frustration. He signaled the dwarven artillery in the far rear to fire.

The trebuchets launched their large boulders at the kingdom. Tower simply replied by using its explosive ballista bolts to shatter the rocks before they got close.

"Again!" Karl shouted.

Another trebuchet volley, another defensive action from Tower. This continued on and on until the trebuchets eventually ran out of projectiles to launch after about a couple of hours.