Edinburgh, being situated right by the sea, was particularly vulnerable.
Not that this was the only city at risk, but it was one of them. As a cultural hub, its loss would be a great blow to the morale of the nation.
This was also the reason Sir Dagonet found himself here; there were many places that needed his protection, but unable as he was to be everywhere, this was where he stood.
Not that he was alone; he had a dozen Enforcement Knights here.
Not many for a city of this size, but they were no less needed in other places than he was, so he would have to make do with this small number.
Something that wasn't easy, given that he wasn't just facing a few Sentinels who had broken through the blockade; here, he was the blockade.
This was one of the main beaches the Sentinels chose to land on, and a large number of them came out of the sea.
Far too many for a mere twelve knights to handle.
If Dagonet were one of the Saber-class knights, he might have had a chance to cut through them all before they reached the city; if he were an Archer-class knight, he could shoot them all from afar.
But he was a Caster.
And a very unusual one at that.
His magical ability was not one of great destructive power, but one of trickery, misdirection, and illusions.
He was a master of the unseen, a weaver of falsehoods, a puppeteer of perception.
He couldn't create a fireball that could level a city, but he could make an entire army see another army that wasn't there.
He couldn't raise a shield that could stop a nuclear bomb, but he could make a dozen knights seem like a thousand.
The problem, however, was that he wasn't fighting against people with senses that were easily tricked; the Sentinels didn't rely on human eyesight. They had far more advanced means of detection. They had thermal imaging, sonar, and radar.
They had a host of other sensors that could detect things beyond the scope of human perception.
So simple illusions would not be enough. He needed to be smarter. He needed to be more creative.
He needed to use the very technology of the Sentinels against them.
"Let the show begin," Dagonet whispered, a faint, almost imperceptible smile on his lips.
He raised his hands, and the air around him began to shimmer, the very fabric of reality seeming to bend to his will.
The twelve Enforcement Knights, who had been standing in a neat, disciplined row, suddenly multiplied. Or, at least, it seemed that way.
To the naked eye, there was no change. The knights were still there, still twelve in number.
But to the Sentinels, to their advanced sensors, the world had just become a very confusing place.
Their thermal scanners suddenly registered a thousand heat signatures, each one identical to those of the knights, each one radiating the same amount of energy.
Their radar screens, once showing a clear picture of the battlefield, were now a blizzard of false contacts, a chaotic mess of ghost signals that made it impossible to distinguish friend from foe, real from fake.
"I think it's working," he said as he saw the small army of Sentinels suddenly stop, as if surprised and unwilling to advance until they finished sorting through the data.
"All right, keep me updated; this is valuable data." The voice of Tony Stark came through the small earpiece he was wearing.
Sir Dagonet knew little of technology; sure, he wasn't completely oblivious to it after living in this age for so long, but he knew far too little to try and trick the Sentinels' advanced systems on his own.
Thankfully, he wasn't on his own.
Behind him stood all of Albion and its allies, which included Tony Stark, someone who knew a thing or two about machines. That included the Sentinels, as they were something he had been studying for weeks now.
As he was the only one of the heroes of this world who had armor that could truly fight these things, he had worked hard to study them, to find their weaknesses.
And he had found them.
One of their main weaknesses was that, for all their advanced processing power, the Sentinels had one main, central processor.
Sure, they had smaller processors that handled more minor tasks, but for the most part, all their information was sent back to the main one.
This was done for the sake of their adaptability, to make it so that if one learned something, they all did.
But it also gave them a single point of failure, a single point that could be attacked.
And that was exactly what Dagonet was doing.
He wasn't creating a thousand real knights. He was creating a thousand data streams, each one designed to overwhelm the Sentinels' central processor, to flood it with so much information that it would crash.
It was a classic denial-of-service attack, a digital assault designed to bring a system to its knees.
But he wasn't doing it with computers. He was doing it with magic.
And that, as Tony had discovered, was a vulnerability the Sentinels were completely unprepared for.
"Okay, they're starting to sort through the data," Tony's voice came through the earpiece again.
Sir Dagonet nodded with a slight sigh; he hadn't held much hope for this plan when he heard it. He seriously doubted that it would be this easy to shut down the entire enemy army.
And indeed, he was proven right.
While the Sentinels seemed unable to see through the trick, the volume of data was far from sufficient to crash the central core.
But it had, at least, bought them a few minutes, and more importantly, it showed them a weakness they could exploit.
A weakness that Tony was already working on exploiting.
"Okay, I'm going to try something a little more... aggressive," Tony said, a hint of excitement in his voice. "I'm going to try to introduce a virus into their network. Something that should, hopefully, cause a system-wide failure. It'll take me a few minutes to get it ready. Can you buy me some more time?"
"I can certainly try," Dagonet replied, a wry smile on his face.
He then turned his attention back to the battlefield, to the Sentinels who were still trying to make sense of the chaotic data he was feeding them.
He had a few more tricks up his sleeve, a few more spells he could use to confuse and disorient them.
He raised his hands again, and the very ground beneath the Sentinels began to shift, the sand and soil seemingly coming to life, rising up to form a series of shifting, swirling dunes.
It was a simple spell, a minor illusion, but it was one that, when combined with the sensory overload he was already causing, would make it even more difficult for the Sentinels to navigate, to get their bearings.
And as expected, the Sentinels had no choice but to react to the sudden change in the environment; they didn't know what was happening, and they were slow to sort through all the data, so they did what they could.
Which meant taking evasive maneuvers, completely giving up the chance to attack or advance, and instead focusing on not falling into some kind of trap.
They were machines; they had no instincts. They only had logic, and logic told them to be cautious.
-----
It was during those minutes, while the Sentinels were busy trying to figure out what was happening, that the virus was finished.
"All right, I'm ready," Tony's voice said, a triumphant note in his tone. "I can't just upload anything to them due to the protections on their network, but maybe your magic can bypass those, since they are so bad at dealing with magic," he said.
This was indeed a gamble, one that might not work, but they had little to lose, and the potential reward was great.
So Sir Dagonet did as Tony asked, and following his instructions, he formed a giant magical QR code, or that was how the genius engineer explained it.
Using the fact that anything the Sentinels saw was translated into data and sent back, and since seeing—or rather, reading—magical energy messed with their sensors, he hoped that they wouldn't notice the hidden programming in the data.
Something that seemed to work, as after the entire battlefield of machines turned their attention to the magical construct for a few seconds, they seemed to go back to normal, still trying to sort through the fake data.
"So, did it work?" Dagonet asked, not seeing any immediate changes.
"I'm not sure," Tony admitted, his voice a little less confident than before. "It won't blow them all up, but it should at least slow down the central core, consume a large amount of its processing power, which in turn should make all Sentinels a lot less intelligent," he explained.
"Which means they will be far easier to deal with," Dagonet finished, a smile appearing on his face.
While it wasn't a true victory, it was a major step in the right direction.
"Exactly," Tony confirmed. "Now, I have to go. I have my own fight to win. Good luck, Sir Dagonet."
"And you as well, Mr. Stark," Dagonet replied, and then he turned his attention back to the battle.
He could already see a change in the Sentinels' behavior. They were slower, more hesitant, their movements less precise. They were still dangerous, but they were no longer the coordinated, intelligent killing machines they had been just a few moments ago.
He knew this was his chance.
He gave the signal, and the twelve Enforcement Knights raised their bows, their arrows of pure magical energy once again flying toward the enemy.
So far, he hadn't had them attack to avoid revealing which of the thousands of knights all around them were real, but now he let them be exposed, hoping that the less intelligent machines would take longer to pinpoint the real ones, allowing him to take down more of them before they started to respond.
This plan, too, seemed to work.
The Sentinels, their processors slowed, their sensors confused, were slow to react. They took the hits, their armor dissolving under the force of the magic, their systems failing.
The beach was soon littered with the wreckage of the machines, the air thick with the smell of ozone and burnt metal.
It was a victory, a small one in the grand scheme of things, but a victory nonetheless.
(End of chapter)
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