War Ascending: Ink Sorceress: Book Three by D. L. Harrison

Author:D. L. Harrison [Harrison, D. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The rough wilderness terrain kept her focused as they ran slowly west toward the enemy camp. Any faster, and they’d risk a bad fall. It would take them a good twelve minutes to cover the ground, and no doubt the mages could feel their approach. She just hoped her gamble in rushing paid off, and they weren’t quite ready for her yet. False dawn shed enough light to see the terrain but the sun had yet to rise over the eastern horizon.

It would do so any moment though, lending them one more advantage as their enemy would be brightly lit up for them, while the men in the camp would be blinded by the rising sun looking in their direction.

She was right about the adrenaline. The mix of it with the nervous fear had turned into energized awareness and edgy excitement. The immediate future depended on her gamble that her power was greater than three average mages right now, at just over three quarters of her power. It was an educated guess, and the sensations from her elemental had told her the third mage wasn’t any more powerful than the other two, or the ones she’d faced yesterday.

But it was a close thing, the feelings unquantifiable and ephemeral in nature, and she couldn’t quite feel assured about it. She was sure she’d gain in confidence as she gained in experience, when measuring the magical power of others through her elementals, but for now it was too new, and it was extremely subjective and subtle.

It wasn’t like the electrified feedback of her own ink array that allowed her to judge her own current magical potential while the array was active. It was more a vague feeling, so vague she feared her interpretation of it could be partially wishful thinking, and false.

She also reminded herself power wasn’t everything, and it far from assured victory for either side. Diversity, planning, and tactics mattered. The attack yesterday had taken her completely by surprise, today she’d do better.

Specifically, in this situation. For them, the spells they chose and any synergies the separate spells would have with each other, and for her it would be her shield formation and angles. Heck, if she could manage it, she’d try to dodge at least one of their spells altogether, if not more, which would all but guarantee a win.

Of course, another military truism was when you expected one of three things from the enemy, they always did the fourth.

It was a bit confusing, and anti-climactic, when they stopped short at a rise and looked down into a fortified camp nestled between two cliffs and a steep mountain behind them. There was a crude palisade built from several trees that was about fifteen feet high. She realized the enemy wasn’t just here to raid villages and keep Xevell off balance for the war. They were also building ready supply caches for that invasion force and defensible positions, using those raids.

Essentially forcing Xevell’s commoners to support their invasion force. It was clever.

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