When Destiny Burns, Ep. 1: A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover

Chapter 7. 6 Poison pt. 1

'Maine, the Varden is fighting the grey beasts, but the soldiers in front of your tunnel grow restless. Soon they will disperse! Jörmundur is furious with you.'

'What's your status?'

'Furious. And not only with you. Come out of there soon and we can finally fight side-by-side!'

'Copy that.'

Then the Spartan tapped into the reserves of magical energy lying in the back of his mind and muttered: "Reisa."

More than a hundred spent casings floated in the air without causing the soldier any discomfort. The system was right; magic didn't take more energy than a normal motion would take. These empty rounds weighed too little to be bothered by them and even though he had just lifted a hundred-and-twenty at the same time, he didn't feel any different.

"Thrysta," He then called and sent ten of the rounds sped towards the urgal ranks, moving at speeds almost equal to their rifle-fired counterparts. The urgals had finally realized that their slow advance was suicide and they had increased their speed to a full-on charge, but that only made their casualties that much more intense.

The rounds impacted on their heads, stopping many of them dead in their tracks. The projectiles did not even need to tear through their brain to kill them; even when they didn't penetrate their skulls, they caused enough blunt force trauma to kill.

All but the strongest Kull survived the first barrage and still the Spartan felt nothing. So he increased the odds.

Backpedaling as he did, the soldier launched another thirty rounds towards the advancing urgals. When that didn't cause any strain, he launched another fifty.

By that point, more than fifty urgals alone had died from his 'recycling' and he started to feel a bit different. He could feel the energy sipping away, but the amount was too insignificant to worry about and even if it did, he would continue.

Slowly but steadily, he backed out of the tunnel while pelting the enemy's ranks with magically launched bullets. More and more urgals fell to his barrage, but more would come to take their place. They were outnumbering him by far.

He reached the end of the tunnel and then ran out of bullets to reuse. He had killed more than three-hundred of the beasts in his opening salvo, but now they were going to flood out of the tunnel.

But he was ready for that.

There wasn't a single soldier waiting for him near the exit; all of Jörmundur's division had moved to reinforce either Ajihad or Hrothgar.

And that was good.

'Spartan!' Aeraleth called out. 'Were you victorious?'

'No,' He replied as he backed out of the tunnel and leaped in-between the two cauldrons of still-boiling pitch. 'Why?'

He looked around and saw that there were two separate fights going on in Farthen Dûr: one by each open tunnel that was not Spartan-occupied. The urgals were severely disadvantaged the dispersal of their forces and inability to make use of their superior numbers, but even so, the Varden and the dwarves were unable to keep them at bay. Slowly but steadily, the horned humanoids were gaining ground. He couldn't see much from his higher position on top of the tunnel, but he did see that his tunnel wasn't the only one with a severely outnumbering force. Both Ajihad and the dwarven king were facing a completely superior foe in numbers and they could not hold them back for long.

'You were in there for a long time for this fight's standards. You have delayed the grey beasts' arrival by at least a few minutes. It allowed Jörmundur to get his troops to better use. But they will not be back at this tunnel for a while. Get out of there!'