Chromancer

Chapter 1

The twin moons that night gave everything an eerie mond-gorn glow. Shara watched as the trees swayed in the wind but could only see the nearest-by ones, a dark mond tinge on one side, and a milky gorn glow on the other. Despite being so high up above everything on the wall, she could still barely see one hundred yards. This is why we need to clear the forest around the walls, she thought. On a night like this, dozens of harvesters could slip through before we would even notice. Unfortunately, the clearing project was a point of political contention, as one party seemed to believe they needed to increase farming efforts and population so that the bastion would have more defenders, but the other half of the people wanted to take workers from the farming efforts and reassign them to clear the forest around the walls, which would make defending easier now, rather than in twenty years time. Unfortunately for defenders like Shara, the former group was currently winning the argument. We can't afford to have another close call like last... Her thoughts were cut off by a sudden movement about thirty yards from the wall. She walked over and leant on the parapet to try and get a closer look. Something flashed between two trees, dark with brightly glowing mond lines.
She was just about to make the call when she heard shouts from other parts of the walls. A couple of seconds later, the gong was struck, ringing from the front gate. About five seconds later, it was struck again. This happened once more, and then ceased altogether. Then a bell started ringing from the town hall. Shara didn't have time to watch the others waking up. She started running towards the front gate, her yellow eyes starting to glow lev. She wouldn't be as strong tonight, because the lev moon was not out, but she would have an advantage, as there would likely be very few lev harvesters. The gong rang once more, meaning that the siege had begun. She tapped a little lev and ran the last fifty paces in three seconds. Inside the tower, she saw two mond-firers looking out the firing slits, and Magnus, eyes glowing gorn. Uh oh.
"The lev moon isn't up, and you're using up chroma," he said. "That little bit of energy could be the deciding point of the battle, but you still insist on being wasteful."
"Just trying to get into the battle quicker," Shara replied. "Anyway, what's happening and when do I start?"
Scowling, he turned and pointed at the two mond-firers looking between the turrets. "As you've probably already guessed, it's standard tactic tonight, gorns at the gates, monds trying to shoot them before they reach the walls, and levs on standby at the entrances."
"You're not sending the levs out? There probably won't be any lev harvesters tonight, they won't be able to keep up!"
"I'm as annoyed as you are, but lots of politicking has been going on since the break-in last month, and the government wants to put the defenders in the least amount of possible danger. The good news is that we might be getting a small clearing project soon."
Shara sighed, she didn't have time to fight. She left through the open doorway, and using some lev, jumped over the parapet into a tree, and climbed down in a couple of seconds. Reaching the ground, she ran onto the path leading to the gate, and saw that two gorns were already in place, fortifying the door. There was also a mond, ready to make the gate heavier if it was needed. Two levs leant against trees nearby. Shara went through her stretches, mentally preparing herself for what could come. And as suddenly as the silence went, a heavy thud sounded against the gate. The siege had begun. The strange humming wooshes of the mond-firers sounded from the tower. She walked towards the gorns, only a few meters from the gates. She recognised the man on the left, Terrel, but kept forgetting the name of the woman on the right, because she was normally assigned to a different gate.
"What're they like tonight, Terrel?" She asked.
He turned to look at her, and his face showed a visible sign of stress each time the gate was thumped. "They aren't at their strongest, but fending them off won't be easy tonight." This did little to calm her nerves. He turned back to the door. If she looked closely, she could see the gorn-coloured light-beams shining from his eyes on to the latch on the gate. Joff, the portly middle-aged man with mond-coloured eyes, was sitting on a rock nearby, lighting his pipe. As always, he looked completely calm, despite the tense atmosphere. She decided to talk to him. Walking over, she sat on the rock next to him.
"Good evening Joff," she began, trying to match his body language with her tone.
"What ails you this evening, Shara?" This man didn't miss a trick.
She sighed, but smiled. "Magnus says that we won't be going out to fight anymore, but..."
"You're scared you don't want to go out anymore?"
She paused. After Cayli was taken last month, that was exactly what she was worried about. She wanted to go out to prove to herself that she would be fine going out again.
"Well, I can help you." She was listening. "I wish I could tell you that being scared not to go out meant that you are still meant to go out. You're possibly saying that to yourself. It's not necessarily true." That wasn't what she wanted to hear. "It means that you're still trying to decide whether you want to. But, I believe that you'll make the best decision for your wellbeing."
Joff had a way of getting to the heart of problems, and that was somehow very calming.
"Thanks Joff, its -" She was cut off by a loud CRACK that sounded from the eastern gate. Shara instinctively started using lev to speed up her reflexes.
"Wait here, I'll check it out," she told the other levs. She started sprinting up the dirt street toward the center of the town, moving faster than humanly possible. She ran the half mile to the town center in five quarters of a minute, and turned to do the same to run to the east gate. She was only halfway when she saw what had happened. One of the doors was cracked right down the middle. Dread rose in Shara's chest as she saw the bright gorn lines of light seeping through the dark crevice in the wooden gate. She was only a hundred paces when a thick CRUNCH sounded, and the gate tore in half, the thick wooden panel falling inwards and almost crushing the gorn soldier that stood behind it. Shara looked on with terror as an eight foot tall stone monster stepped through the opening, beams of light shining out from the cracks in its craggy form. A pair of pulses of red light shot at the creature from the two monds in the tower. Shara didn't have time to think about it, she just tapped lev and started running toward the gate. The creature waited only a second before swinging its enormous arm at the nearest gorn soldier. He raised his arms and braced himself, and the swipe bounced off, ineffective. In a couple of seconds, she had reached the scene.
"I've got you covered!" Shouted the other gorn soldier, a man about the age of twenty. She slipped the long knife out of the sheath on her belt. The Harvester started turning to face her, but she had already leaped at its back. She hit the rocky back of the creature with her feet, her left hand on its left shoulder. She tightened her grip on her knife's hilt, and jammed it in a crack in the beast's right shoulder, feeling the blade grate against the rocky exoskeleton and squelch through the Harvester's softer inner workings. The monster, completely silent until this point, let out a guttural humming roar from no part of its body in particular. She tore the blade out and leapt off the beast's back, flying twenty feet with drips of gorn blood trailing from her blade, before gracefully landing on the road. Just as she did, its left arm swung through the air that her head had just occupied. A number of bright mond energy bolts hit the creature all at once, and it started to appear sluggish. it stepped backwards towards the door, but before it got there, a mond bolt of energy flew through from the other side of the gateway, whooshed past Shara and hit a tree, leaving a burning circle of charred bark. It didn't look like it would start a fire, so Shara returned her attention to the gate. The gorn Harvester was exiting through the doorway, and behind it she could see the glowing cracks of two distinct mond harvesters.
"I'll go warn my gate," she said to the two levs at this post. "The north gate," she said to clarify. They nodded, and ran over to the wall, taking positions ready to attack anything that passed through the door. She turned and started running towards the town center again. She finally reached the center, and looking down each road, could tell that the other gates were fine. She headed down the north road, and ran the distance in a little over a minute and a half.
"They've broken through the east gate, I saw a gorn and two monds, the gorn appeared to be retreating, so they probably have more monds or a lev."
"How'd they get through so quickly?" Terrel asked.
She stopped to consider it. "It's possible that the guards are feeling under the weather, but it's also possible that there were two or more lev harvesters, which would weaken the fortifiers more than we could have expected. It doesn't matter much now, we just need to make sure that we don't let the same thing happen here." Terrel seemed to accept this, and turned back to the gate. His partner - Tania? Tianna? Shara couldn't remember - suddenly tensed up.
"Something's happening," she declared. "I don't know what." As if on cue, a strange sound started coming from the gate, a sizzling, bubbling sound. Terrel tensed up as well, and the dim beams from their eyes brightened to cover the whole gate, rather than just the locking mechanism. A few seconds passed as the repetitive thumping of the door ceased, and the only sound was the strange sizzling. Everyone present stood and watched the door. The Harvesters couldn't be giving up? The sizzling slowed down after a few moments, and the thumping restarted, but each strike was followed by a nasty creak, which suggested that the wood was on the edge of giving. Shara used her lev to gift Terrel and Tana - she was sure it was Tana - some extra chromatic strength. Two hits later, a stone fist broke right through the right panel of the gate, sending splinters flying, and then retreated. Strangely, it had broken straight through the door, without pulling any larger chunks of wood with it.
"How did that happen?" asked Garen, one of the two levs, who had been talking to Joff before things had become strange.
"I don't know!" shouted Tara, seeming terribly frustrated at Garen, as if it was his fault the door had been broken.
"I'm going to find out what's happening," Shara stated. "Lift me up Joff." Before he had time to say anything, she was already running directly toward a section of wall just to the right of the gate tower. Just before she reached the wall, she felt her weight decrease significantly. She transferred her forward velocity and used it to run up the wall. She reached the top of the fifteen foot wall, reached her arm over the parapet and pulled herself onto the walkway, turning to run into the tower.
"What's happening?" She half asked, half shouted at the two mond-eyed soldiers. They barely managed to turn their eyes from looking out through their firing slits.
"There's a harvester down there that's..." the soldier on the left began. "Well, it's not any of the colours we've seen before."
Shara went to say something, but realized the implications of what had been said. She weighed this information up in her mind. She turned to look at Magnus, who was pacing agitatedly around the back of the tower. "Magnus," she said. "Cover me, I'm going down."