"Who do we have on active duty?" George asked, as Mindy"s raid went out."Our own? Almost n.o.body, today. Everyone"s on break." Marcus commented. "The La Vivans and the Ashdalians are on patrol until lunch time."
"Dragons?"
"In really bad shape and worse mood. I"d rather not go anywhere near them right now."
"Other Wilds?"
"Took heavy casualties in that last crazy battle. Many of them already want to withdraw."
George closed his eyes. "Artillery?"
"Down for emergency maintenance. That last fight took almost everything we had and several ballistae have broken down."
"Airships?"
"Mostly exhausted. They can still provide air support, but its best not to ask too much of them." Marcus paused. "Their crews are all human, you know. Since most of them can"t afford to buy crystal fuel, they"re manually powered by their own magi. Every cannon shot and turbine on all the airships are powered by magi, and those magi are exhausted."
"So… if we provided crystals…" George glanced at the pile of yellow crystals at his side.
Marcus shook his head. "Yellow crystals would hardly make much of a difference. If you had a hundred blue crystals, we could have all our airships blast away at full power non-stop for hours, but four hundred yellow ones could barely afford a few shots from a military-grade cannon."
"Better to use them for water than fire." George mused.
"What about your big friends?" Marcus asked.
"If our Tier 8"s make a move, theirs will too. Best to let them rest, and not provoke their big guys."
Tim raised his head. "I have an idea."
George turned. "What is it?"
"Let"s NOT provoke the Spectres." Tim suggested.
George nearly facepalmed. "Tim, I"m trying to support Mindy"s raid here…"
"But we can do it without provoking a hostile response, can"t we?" Tim asked. "We just have to do something that grabs their attention but doesn"t make them angry."
"Such as?" George raised an eyebrow.
"Such as digging ditches." Tim shrugged.
George stared. "How does that help?"
"It"s a measure of fortification." Tim said. "Especially if…"
"If…?"
"If we fill them with water."
***
It worked. It really did. Tim"s lynxmice went to work by the hundreds and dug a ditch five feet wide crossing the entire battle range from one end to the other. A layer of mortar was laid by Iron Legionnaires, dried and hardened with magic. A connection was dug directly to Dragon Lake and water began to fill it up.
The instant water started to fill the ditch, the full attention of the entire Spectre horde was drawn to it. They roared and stamped their feet, and several of them instantly started to attack.
"Mindy"s theory is becoming more and more believable." George muttered seeing the Spectres" reaction to the line of water. "At this rate, water hoses might soon become our best weapons."
"It looks like it"s time to stop building ballistae and build catapults instead." Marcus sighed.
"Catapults…? Are you thinking what I"m thinking?" George asked.
"Buckets of water? Pretty much, yeah." Marcus nodded. "It might not get through the shields raised by higher Tier Spectres, but it should help us hold off the lower Tier ma.s.ses."
George snapped his fingers. "We should build a pool around the Rift! Surround it completely with water! That way, Remian could still come back. He"ll get soaked, but he"ll get through…"
Tim cheered. "Great! And how do you stop the water from flowing through the Rift and draining out the pool in the process?"
George"s face fell. "Maybe… dig a lake under it? So that the Rift is hovering over a huge lake?"
"Spectres won"t let us, and even if they did, they"ll probably just vaporize it later."
"Sink the whole region into the sea!"
"That… might actually work." Tim mused. "But again, we can"t get close enough to do it with tools, so we"d need to blast the whole region from afar. Do you happen to have that kind of firepower hidden around somewhere?"
George sighed. "What you see is what I"ve got. Except for the remaining defense force guarding KarGoth, all the firepower I can muster is already here."
"I could say the same, except I have some half-built magic cannons being built at Fal"Herim. I think we can convert them to magic water cannons without much trouble." Tim said. "But they certainly won"t be enough to sink the entire Dead Lands Region."
"Isn"t the Dead Lands covered with black oil? Isn"t that liquid? How is it that the Spectres don"t have a problem with that?"
"It"s flammable liquid. The Spectres might even be consuming it as a sort of fuel." Tim shook his head.
"It sounds like they"re some sort of fire-beings… but… isn"t wood flammable too?"
"Wood seems to be contrary to their nature. They"re not exactly fire-beings. They"re more like… energy-beings? I guess."
"If the oil is beneficial to them… you think maybe if we gave them the oil, they"ll stop coming after us?" George suggested.
"If that were the case, they"d have stopped by now. The oil is already all within their territory. But they"re still coming." Tim shook his head. "We don"t really know what they want or why they"re trying to kill us all, and we have no way to communicate with them. Mindy"s theory is as good a guess as it gets. All we can do is fight them off."
"With wood and water?"
"With wood and water."
***
They started building water pumps at Dragon Lake and importing hoses by the ton. Half of George"s airships left the field to trade magic cannons for water cannons and ammunition stores for water tanks.
Among the defenders, warriors traded metal swords for wooden staves. The martial quarterstaff instantly became a popular choice, but even that was soon outshone by the demand for oversized wooden warhammers. Meanwhile, wooden armor also became immensely popular, especially the Sea People"s bamboo splint mail.
Among the Wilds, the elephant clans suddenly found themselves highly valued and in-demand. Just last week, eagles were the Comrade of choice. Today, everyone wanted an elephant at their side.
The price of water magic scrolls suddenly doubled, then tripled from what it used to be. The previously unpopular water ball spell, often seen as a child"s toy or a lazy way to put out a small fire, shockingly became the top choice for all scroll-casting mages and warriors at the Spectral War front. More powerful magi put aside their aspirations for fireb.a.l.l.s and lightning bolts and suddenly began to develop their skills and affinities for the spell known as Glacial Spike.
All this activity around water definitely seized the Spectres" attention. There was much gnashing of teeth and snarling to be heard, and several times in that single day, there were sudden incursions. They were fought off with wooden weapons and water hoses and more and more people saw the efficacy of such weaponry against the Spectres and they, too, went to garner their own. As the day went by, the entirety of the defense forces were thoroughly convinced that wood and water were the best ways to fight the Spectres off.
Meanwhile, barely noticed by the horde of Spectres, Mindy"s raid slipped by and made their way to Nine Kings Range.