Chapter 11

Pacing. Back and forth, step, step, step, silent gray feet ghosting over knee-high grass that shifted with the movements, but made no sound.

Back, and forth.

Back, and forth.

Some blades of grass and their seeded stems shuddered and drifted to the ground when sliced through by a black sword, a sword that almost seem to glow with hidden power. The grass settled into the wavering sea of grass, grass growing on a flat-topped ridge that overlooked the port city of Verix. The sun was high in a sky devoid of clouds, a sun that shimmered summer heat down upon a dry sea of grass, which had not seen rain for days. The high grass slowly became shorter and shorter as the sword held within a paw inadvertently sheared the grass in the path of the holder’s pacing, until a long trail of trampled grass became clear and open.

Back, and forth.

Back, and forth.

Back, and forth.

Minutes became hours. Hours became days. For two days, the shadow paced along that same line, unmolested by those in the city for fear of his power, unsure of what he was doing, unaware that it was now over, no matter what they did…it was just a matter of cleaning them out of Verix. They had been defeated the instant the shadow had reclaimed the sword. They were afraid to face him, afraid to abandon their defenses, allowing the shadow to lay siege to Verix all by himself, since the shadow seemed unwilling to come in after them.

But there was a method to the madness. Those days pacing the ridge had been important days, and what was more, those were days when the attention of the Demon Lord was firmly affixed in one place, to one person, watching for an attack that did not come.

The Demons. They were afraid. They could feel the power. They knew what he had. They knew he meant to attack Verix. But they didn’t know why he had not done so the instant he arrived, why he paced the ridge day and night, step by step, pacing, pacing, pacing. But it served its purpose. With the sword held tightly in a gray paw, he was keeping every eye on him, keeping all the Demons in fear, but keeping Gruz unsettled.

Within Verix, inside a grand palace raised for its occupant, there was another being pacing back and forth, on a balcony overlooking the land, in sight of the pacing shadow. The feet pacing back and forth within that palace were massive and unnatural, dog-like paws so wide across four men could put their feet into the print they would leave behind. Those were the feet of Gruz, the Demon Lord of the glabrezu, a Demon of unmatched power and intelligence. But that intelligence was baffled, unsettled, confused.

Why did the shadow refuse to attack?

Gruz wanted that sword, but it was now being held in the paw of the one being on the entire planet that Gruz could not kill easily. If it had been in anyone else’s possession, even the damnable Tarrin Kael who had returned to Pyrosia as a mortal, it would have been a simple matter to retrieve it. But not that one.

Why didn’t it attack? With the power of the sword, it could shear through the defenders and challenge Gruz himself, but it did not. It simply stood on that ridge, hour after hour, day after day, pacing back and forth like a predator waiting for a treed squirrel trapped in a solitary tree in an open meadow to come down and make a run for it. The Demon Lord’s vast intellect couldn’t understand the reason for it. It had spent days, weeks, months systematically killing Demons, in some kind of plan that even the Demon Lord couldn’t fully comprehend. It had also been saving villages and towns from Demonic occupation, breaking up marches where Demons emptied villages to move the mortals to large cities, and most unusual of all, it had been abducting humans, seemingly at random, and spiriting them away.

But it wasn’t as random as it seemed. The humans the shadow took were Sorcerers. It seemed to instinctually understand that they needed to be kept alive, so it worked very hard to save them, even as the Demons were trying to find and kill them.

It seemed to have completed those plans, and with shocking ease, it had killed the hezrou that had retrieved one shard of the sword, then somehow wrested the other half of it from the Were-cat. It had restored the Sword of Fire, and now held that dangerous artifact in its paw as it stalked the ridge.

That in itself was…almost unbelievable. The Were-cat was not an enemy to take lightly, and he wouldn’t have simply given that shard up. The shadow had attacked his own creator and stolen the shard, and had managed to do it without being destroyed. It had either tricked the shard from its creator with guile, or had ambushed him by pretending to be amiable.

Either way, it now had possession of all that power, the power that was once possessed by a god. And the sword, having no master, now obeyed the one who held it, just as Gruz had hoped to do.

Why not attack, when it had an advantage? Why stop now, after coming so far?

It was…waiting. It was waiting for something, something to happen. That was the only logical answer. But the question was, what was it waiting for? A sign? Waiting for Shaz’Baket to attack Pyros? That was still three days away. Or was it waiting for them to send out their human chattel to try to kill it? Was it wary of attacking the city with so many humans inside, and was waiting for a chance to attack without mortals getting in the way?

That was unlikely. No, it was waiting for something to happen. Gruz didn’t know what that was, but he understood that he’d best quickly figure it out.

Movement. Gruz stopped pacing and peered out to the ridge, for he’d seen movement. Yes, there was movement. A single, solitary mortal, a human woman wearing a peasant smock of rough burlap, with long blonde hair. She walked up and into view, holding a rough farmer’s hoe. The shadow stopped, looked back to her. She stepped up to the path the shadow had made in the grass, and the shadow came back to her. She curtsied to the shadow when it stalked up to her.

There was…something about that human female….

In that instant, Gruz put it all together. And he knew fear.

Summon forth all our chattel humans and Cambisi and prepare to attack! Gruz barked telepathically.

At once, my Lord, came a reply.

That was why it was here! It was waiting for her! It was showing her to him, to force him to play his hand!

My minions, attend me, he ordered hotly. If the shadow penetrates our defenses, we will face it in force.

Let it come, Gruz would be ready. It was in for quite a shock when it found out that Gruz could defend himself. He wasn’t strong enough to destroy the shadow when it wielded that sword, but he could certainly defend himself from it.

“Will they attack now, my Lord?” the girl asked the shadow.

The shadow nodded silently. To her knowledge, he had never spoken.

She set her hoe on the ground. “Mistress of the Dawn, grant me strength now and bolster me in the face of our enemies,” she whispered under her breath, her hand going to a silver medallion tucked under her rough smock, a medallion showing the rising sun peeking between two rolling hills. “Give me the strength to smite this scourge on our land in your holy name and restore our land to prosperity and peace.”

The girl put the base of her palms together and raised her spread hands, looking like a flower, towards the east, then withdrew her medallion and kissed it, as the gates of Verix opened and a horde of half-human Cambisi and human soldiers poured out of those gates.

Like a ghost immune to gravity, the shadow bounded down the hill, his feet barely touching the ground, looking like he was floating as he raced towards those city gates, towards those enemy forces. The sword in his huge hand burst into flame, and he took it up in both hands, holding it low and to his side, as he rushed fearlessly right towards the middle of the army rushing out to kill him, thousands of men and monsters screaming and banging swords and axes against shields. The girl blinked and took up her hoe, then started running after him. This was not her fight. He needed her inside, when they faced their greatest foe, and she would not let him or her Mistress down. Her task, for now, was only to follow him.

That task was easy. The shadow slammed into the lead elements of the army, and there was a huge BOOM, and to her surprise, bodies were flying in every direction! Screams of fear and agony followed the loud blast, and then the shadow turned and slashed the sword towards his left side, causing a scythe of brilliant light to erupt from the sword. That line of light sliced through everything it struck, striking down dozens of humans and half-Demons in a single swipe.

The girl struggled to keep up, because the shadow did not slow down. It charged right through the enemy host as if they were not there, and not a single thing survived once he passed by. Loud explosions, scythes of magic, eruptions of fire, and shrieking gales of air were unleashed from the sword, slaughtering everything in the shadow’s path, leaving nothing alive to threaten the girl following him from behind as he closed in on the city gates, gates that they were now trying to close.

As if that made any difference at all.

The shadow slid to a stop and raised the sword in both paws, the slashed it into the ground. A massive shockwave erupted from the point of impact, a heaving of the earth up to the girl’s chest if she were there, rampaging across the ground between the shadow and the city wall. Men and halfbreeds were flung like dolls thrown by a toddler in a tantrum as the shockwave roared past them, then that wave struck the gatehouse and city walls.

There was a thunderous noise of shattering stone, and then a roar as the gatehouse and the walls to either side of it exploded, sending shards of stone rocketing away from the point of impact and sending a huge cloud of dust into the air. The girl staggered back with a gasp of surprise at the tremendous power unleashed by the shadow, but she had been warned not to be too surprised, that she would witness power on a scale unheralded for this world unleashed in this fight. She collected herself and ran to catch up with the shadow, which invaded the city of Verix.

Running past the ruined walls, the girl tried to keep up with the rampaging shadow, who was destroying everything in his path that challenged him. A blast of fire incinerated a company of human soldiers, then the shadow turned the sword and slashed fifty ghastly Demons apart with a shearing blade of pure magic. One huge Demon, twice the size of a man and with big pincers instead of hands, charged out of the dust and smoke and ash, but it tumbled to the earth in two smoldering pieces when the shadow cut it in half at the waist, using the sword in the manner in which it was intended.

Her breath quickening, the girl raced on, trying not to look at the carnage. The shadow was being absolutely ruthless, killing anything in his path, even the women and children that the Demons had tried to pull from the buildings. Nothing survived his rampage, and he considered everyone within these walls except for her to be an enemy. But every moment racked up more and more dead, and every moment brought them closer to the palace in the center of the city where their ultimate enemy waited.

She screamed when something lurched out of the dust towards her, a huge bony thing, but then it squealed and was sent flying backwards to vanish into the pall. She looked at something over her head, then took a quick step back in surprise.

It was another one that looked like the shadow, but this one wasn’t a shadow! He looked just like the shadow, but had bronze skin and black fur, except his right arm, and large wings made of living fire!

“I have no idea what he’s doing, but clearly you’re a part of it,” the creature said. “Come on, keep up with him. And explain this to me.”

“Yes, good Master. My Mistress sent me to help him,” she said breathlessly as the new being simply floated along with her as she ran to catch up. “He needs me to face the Demon Lord.”

“Your Mistress?”

“Mistress Breina of the Dawn,” she answered. “I am Rilli, her faithful subject and humble Priestess.”

“I should have figured,” the creature growled. “So, he means to take on the Demon Lord alone?”
“Not entirely alone, good Master,” she panted in reply, ducking under a twisted piece of wreckage, the remains of a building that had been thrown into the street. “Who are you?”

“I created him,” he said dryly. “You can call him my son.”

“You are the Mortal God?” she gasped.

“Breina needs to keep her mouth shut,” he growled. “I was the Mortal God, human. Now I’m just a mortal like you.”

“I was told you are in Pyros. How did you get here so fast?”
“I am in Pyros. What you see here is just a projection, an image of me I can send anywhere,” he told her. “This isn’t working. Hang on.”

The girl gasped and gave a squeal when something picked her up, and suddenly she was flying just above the ground! She was going so fast, she saw that they would catch up with the shadow in seconds! “If he’s going to attempt this insanity, we should help him as much as we can,” the Mortal God grunted. “What did he want you to do?”

“I am to strike at the Demon Lord with the power of my Goddess, to weaken it so the shadow may kill it,” she answered. “My Mistress told me that it is magic far beyond my current training, but she would help by doing it directly, through me.”

“She can do that,” the Mortal God grunted as the shadow blasted another large swath of Demons and humans that had moved to block his march to the palace. Body parts and black sludge went flying in every direction, and Rilli flinched and moved to cover her face when a mangled arm nearly hit her in the face. “I see he takes after me,” the Mortal God said undelicately. “Listen, human, what Breina intends to do isn’t going to be easy on you.”

“I was warned, good Master,” she said calmly. “My Mistress explicitly warned me it might kill me. But I would gladly die in her service.”

“Well, you’re a gutsy little thing, that’s for sure,” the Mortal God told her with a humorless chuckle. But that half-smile turned to a stony mask that seemed scary as the towering palace of the Demon Lord came into view ahead of them, through the dust and smoke. “He’s being an idiot, I can kill the Demon Lord once we’re done in Pyros,” the Mortal God complained. What did Mistress Breina call him? Torran? Taron? Tarrin! yes, Tarrin! That was his name! “Did he explain why we’re doing this right now to you, cub?”

“He has never spoken a single word, good Master,” she said as they flew over a large pile of unidentifiable body parts, which nearly made Rilli sick to look at. “Must he be so brutal?”

“When you’re killing the way he is, it’s the easiest way to go about it,” Lord Tarrin said evenly.

“My Mistress did explain that he’s trying to prevent the battle in Pyros, good Master,” she continued as they turned down a long avenue that led to the palace, where the shadow had stopped to eradicate a howling gaggle of small, pitiful little things that had a Demonic presence. The shadow’s sword slashed the air before him, and a shockwave exploded outward, making their bodies pop in grisly explosions of black spoor and gray bones. “If the Demon Lord is killed, then all the Demons will vanish. The shadow seeks to make that come about.”

Rilli could feel the crushing presence of the Demon Lord. What power! Even from where she was, she could feel it like a great weight pressing on her chest. But Lord Tarrin began to swear sulfurously. “Damn it all, pull back!” he shouted to the shadow. “Can’t you feel it, you idiot? You can’t charge in there alone!”

“What is wrong, good Master?”

“The Demon Lord somehow got a piece of his powers back,” the Mortal God snapped hotly. “My shadow will be fighting someone with the powers of a god! If Bane takes him on, he’ll wipe Verix and most of the area around it off the face of Pyrosia! The land can’t support that kind of confrontation if the Demon Lord and my sword battle each other directly! Pull back, damn you!” he shouted. “Not here! Not now! You’ll destroy half of the east coast of Pyrosia!”

It was too late. The shadow launched himself high, high into the air, landing on a balcony and disappearing inside. Almost immediately, the entire palace seemed to shudder, pull in, and then the entirety of the massive construction simply obliterated. The air seemed to split, and the sound was so loud that it ruptured Rilli’s eardrums as half the city of Verix collapsed to the ground in a thunderous cloud of dust and a sound so loud that it was felt rather than heard.

Rilli covered her head, but nothing fell on her. In her pained silence, she saw the Mortal God reach out and put his huge white-furred hand through her head. Her ears stung, then felt icy cold, and the she could hear again! “Wh-What was that, good Master?” she said in stunned disbelief.

“That was Bane learning the hard way what happens when powers confront each other directly in the material plane,” he growled in disgust. “The Demon Lord struck at Bane with his power, and Bane struck back. This world can’t handle that kind of power, cub.”

“Is the good Master alright?” she asked fearfully.

The Mortal God looked this way, then that. “He’s still there, over there,” he said, pointing. “He won’t back off, he’s going to attack again. This is going to get ugly, little one. Hang on!”

Rilli screamed when the air around what used to be the palace seemed to stretch, snap back, and then explode in a rush of air that destroyed the rest of Verix that the first explosion did not. All the dust and smoke was instantly blown away, showing a massive monster out of the nightmares of children, at least twenty rods tall, with a dog’s head and four arms, two with bone swords for hands and two growing out of its chest, looming over the shadow. She had always thought the shadow was so very tall, but standing before that monster, it looked like a toy soldier! The sword in his hands blazed with blinding light, burning so brightly it hurt to look at it. Rilli found herself suddenly on her feet as the Mortal God surged forward, his fiery wings flushing with brilliant white light. “Now, girl!” he barked as an incandescent ball of pure light formed between his big furry hands, which then turned blacker than the blackest night, lightning crackling around its surface. “GRUZ!” he shouted, causing the titanic Demon to look at them.

Rilli almost froze with fear, but the gentle warmth in her reminded her of her task here. She began speaking the words, words she did not know, words that came tumbling from her lips of their own volition. They were words of immense power, words that caused the air to shiver around her. As she recited the incantation, the Mortal God unleashed that black ball of magic at the Demon Lord, even as the shadow vaulted into the air, his blazing sword preparing to shear the Demon in twain.

The Demon Lord seemed to take in the entire situation in an instant, and decided not to battle three adversaries. His form wavered, and then he vanished into thin air! Lord Tarrin’s black ball of magic almost hit the shadow as it jumped through the air where the Demon Lord had been, coming dangerously close to him.

The shadow approached them, sword blazing in his charcoal hand, red glowing eyes looking accusingly at Lord Tarrin. “He has some of his power back,” the Mortal God grunted. “What did you expect?”

“Um, where did he go?” Rilli asked.

“He ran,” Lord Tarrin growled. “That way, far away. Can’t you feel it?”

“Umm, no,” she said sheepishly. “He fled into the sea?”

“No, cub. He’s far out. Maybe as far as Auromar.”

“Auromar!” she gasped.

“It would be the perfect place for him to hide, a dead continent, far from his enemies,” he grunted, then he looked to the shadow. “Well?”

The shadow simply glanced at him, the fire around the sword fading. He then turned to walk towards the harbor.

“At least explain how you used Druidic magic.”

The shadow stopped, glanced at him over his shoulder, then vanished like smoke.

“Stubborn fool,” the Mortal God spat. “Well, let’s get you somewhere safe, little one. Stand still, I’m bringing you back to Pyros.”

“What is he doing?”

“Chasing after the Demon Lord,” he answered. “He knows it won’t be an easy fight. The Demon Lord somehow got some of his power back, and he can’t take any help with him. But, I think maybe he won’t try to kill him.”

“Then why chase him?”

“To keep the Demon Lord away from Pyros,” he answered. Rilli gasped as the entire world seemed to shimmer, and she was suddenly standing in a walled compound filled with all manner of people—and non-humans! “Now that he has some of his power back, he could really complicate things here. But he won’t show up here if my shadow keeps him busy. Actually, I understand now why he attacked. He couldn’t let the Demon Lord come to Pyros. He had to know the Demon Lord had his power back, he’d only been stalking outside of Verix for two days. It must be why he called you in.”

“Who is this, Tarrin?” a monstrous human with brown skin asked, wearing a very ornate, gold-inset breastplate.

“One of my shadow’s little helpers,” he answered the huge man. “She’s a Priestess, Zak. Get her some clothes and find her a place to get some rest.”

Rilli looked at the Mortal God, then gasped when she saw another of him standing in the middle of a raised area in the middle of the compound!

“Oh, that’s the real me, little one,” he said with a chuckle. “I told you, this is just an image. It’s not real. That is the real me. Oh, little one, tell your Mistress I want to talk to her.”

“I, I can try to give her the message, my Lord.”

“She’ll listen. She probably already heard it. Now, go get some decent clothes, grab some food, get some rest, and we’ll talk later.”

She was led away by the big brown man, who handed her over to a pair of armored men who treated her with kindness and respect. She realized, looking around, that she really was in Pyros, that he had brought her halfway across Pyrosia in the blink of an eye. What amazing powers these people had! But, it was good that she was here. Since she couldn’t really help the shadow, she could be here to help when the battle here began. She’d heard about this through her meditation, omens and visions her Mistress showed her. There was going to be a battle here, a huge battle, and the very fate of Pyrosia hinged on who emerged from that battle the victor.

If that was the case, then she was in the right place. She had to help.

“What happened, Tarrin?” Kimmie asked as the projection dissolved, and Tarrin shivered his wings and then withdrew them. He, Kimmie, and Camara Tal had been having a talk while Tarrin and Camara played a game of chess, before his light touch of awareness about his sword warned him that something major was happening, causing him to project out to Verix to see what was going on.

He went over the quick yet ugly confrontation in Verix. “The Demon Lord somehow got some of his power back,” he explained. “When my shadow confronted it, there was one of those cataclysmic exchanges when those kinds of powers clash in the material plane. Verix basically isn’t there anymore,” he said bluntly. “The Demon Lord fled when me and that little girl got into the fight, which was only smart. That little peasant girl is a Priestess, and she was about to complete a spell that would have weakened the Demon Lord enough for my shadow to kill him,” he told them.

“How did the Demon Lord get his power back?” Camara Tal asked in surprise. “Shouldn’t that be impossible?”

“Nothing is really impossible, Camara, just unlikely,” Tarrin answered. “He’s smart, he must have found a loophole somewhere. He didn’t feel as strong as he was before I made the Weave, but there’s certainly something there. Enough to exercise some divine power, at the very least. It’s good it happened there, though, and we know about it now. It would have been messy if he just popped into the middle of the coming battle and started throwing that power around.”

“That might have been one of the surprises the marilith has up her sleeve,” Kimmie reasoned.

“Possible, but I don’t think so. The Demon Lord has to know what I have. I don’t think he’d risk it all like that coming within bowshot of me. Either way, it’s something that I’m glad I know before I’m the one hunting him down. Now I know what to expect. What I didn’t expect is that the Demon Lord fled to Auromar.”

“Auromar? There’s nothing out there,” Kimmie said in a curious voice. “Why go there?”

“Because there’s nothing out there, and it takes a ship to reach it,” Camara Tal answered.

“My shadow is chasing it down, and will probably keep him very busy for the next couple of days. The Demon Lord is going to find out quickly that my shadow can travel as fast as any Demon, thanks to it using Druidic magic,” he nearly choked on those words.

“Has Triana or Sapphire figured it out yet?”

He sighed and shook his head. “They won’t even let me try. They just tell me that it would be suicide to try from their attempts to even touch the All of this world. They say it has no will, that it would vaporize any Druid who tried to use it. I just don’t understand how my shadow can use it. It should be dead. By the trees, it’s not living, it shouldn’t be able to use Druidic magic at all! Druidic magic is the magic of life. It doesn’t work on undead, and undead can’t use it. And my shadow isn’t really truly alive!”

“Maybe the fact that isn’t really alive is why it can use Druidic magic here,” Kimmie mused, tapping her cheek with a tabby-furred finger. “After all, it’s a magical construct. If there was anything that could survive touching the All here, it would be someone without a physical body that couldn’t stand the strain of it.”

“Then why can it use Druidic magic if it’s not living?”

“Well, it’s not really alive, but it is a direct creation of you, dear,” she told him patiently. “It’s your shadow, a part of you. That it might have gained some of your magical abilities doesn’t seem very far-fetched. It just took it a while to learn how to use them, that’s all. I’d bet it can use Sorcery and Wizard magic, too.”

“Well, that’s a reasonable idea, at least,” Camara Tal grunted, moving a pawn.

“I guess it is, but still. I just don’t understand it.”

“If nothing in life was a mystery, dear, it would be a very boring life,” Kimmie quipped.

“I’m not in a position where I like things I can’t explain, Kimmie,” he said darkly. “Not here, not now. Not with two armies marching here to wipe us out.”

“I guess not,” she sighed.

Tarrin raised his chin and reached out through the Weave. In seconds, he found what he was looking for, two separate armies plowing through mud by using their largest Demons as trailbreakers. Yesterday, both armies abandoned their positions and began pushing to get here. Shiika’s forces were moving much faster than the southern forces, trying to get here at the same time, but Tarrin could see that that wasn’t going to happen. Even at her increased speed, the southern army would beat her to Pyros by at least a day.

“How long?” Camara asked, looking at him.

“Two days for the southern army, three days for the eastern army,” he answered immediately. “I’m keeping the rain on them. I want the humans to be exhausted when they get here.”

“I don’t think the southern army will attack without Shaz’Baket, so they’ll have time to rest.”

“We’ll see,” Tarrin grunted.

The mystery of his shadow dogged Tarrin every moment while they waited for the enemy to arrive, as everyone secured provisions and supplies, practiced drills for moving from wall to wall, and made sure everything was in working order and ready. As the generals kept all the troops busy with endless practice sessions, drills, and assignments, Tarrin pondered his shadow. He couldn’t feel any more releases of power, so the shadow wasn’t fighting the Demon Lord. It was clearly on Auromar, he could tell, but either the shadow feared attacking the Demon Lord after the nasty shock it received in Verix, or the Demon Lord was staying away from his shadow.

But there were other things he had to do. When the southern army was one day away, he turned his power over the weather on Pyros itself. Soldiers watched in amazement as a massive storm formed in a perfect ring around the volcano, then unleashed a deluge so thick it looked like a wall of water that saturated the ground and turned the rocky, lava flow-strewn plain into a grayish quagmire of mud and rock. But, not a drop of rain fell on the defenders of Pyros. The rain pounded out beyond the wall for hours, then as quickly as it began, it simply stopped, though the clouds above remained in place, casting shade on the mud to prevent the sun from drying it out. The ring of mud started about five hundred spans out from the outer wall and extended out nearly two longspans, a muddy morass that would make any attempt to cross it an unpleasant, difficult, slow affair. The lava flows were broken up and rendered down to soil, which was then saturated by the water around it to become mud, robbing the army of any easy approach. Tarrin reached deeply into the ground, down into the heart of the volcano, and stabilized the volcano, to prevent another eruption should magical forces put enough stress onto the local geography to cause it. He did not want to have to quell an eruption, that was much harder than triggering one. He did, however, put some selective fault lines through the rock, isolating them from the magma chamber, which would allow him to vent magma to certain selected parts of the local region, a deadly lava trap should human soldiers wander into one of the release areas.

Everyone in Pyros stopped when they saw the light emanating from Tarrin Kael’s wings, a brilliant white as he rose above the city, arms outstretched as he worked his magic, magic that enveloped the entire area. Stone was strengthened, both in the walls and in the ground, and imbued with a latent magical aura that would prevent any earth-native creatures from penetrating it…Tarrin remembered well Shaz’Baket’s use of Xorn at the battle of Iron Mountain, and he wouldn’t let a trick like that happen again. Once that was done, he lowered himself back to the ground and summoned all four of his Elementals, each in its preferred natural form, who looked quite sober and grave. They knew what was going on here. The fire Elemental asked him if it was time, and Tarrin shook his head.

“They probably won’t be here until tomorrow,” he said, “but I need to talk to you now. My friend, I need you to go outside the city and try to penetrate the walls, to make sure my counter works properly,” he told the earth Elemental. “And the ground beneath us. I don’t want any Xorn sneaking in here.”

The earth Elemental nodded to him, then turned and lumbered away.

“I need you to check the magma chamber in the volcano and make sure I set it correctly,” he told the fire Elemental. “I don’t want it erupting on us.”

The fire Elemental spread its wings and soared up towards the caldera of the volcano. His fire Elemental was a bird in its own plane, and always felt most comfortable in that form.

The air and water Elementals looked to him curiously. “I don’t have any tasks here for you two, but I know that both of you hold some sway in your planes, particularly you,” he said, looking to his water Elemental. “I want you two to go back home and spread a warning of what’s coming. Can you pass that warning on to the other planes?”

The water Elemental nodded, then deigned to speak audibly. “I can ask my Mistress to contact the other monarchs, so that the message might be passed among all.”

“Good, that’s what I was hoping for. Just pass the word about the coming battle. I want the Elementals to know what’s going on before they show up, so they understand how serious it’s going to be. Hopefully, any Elementals summoned by Wizards on our side won’t be so quick to try to break free if they understand what’s going on.”

“I doubt that would influence them. After all, what happens here truly has no meaning to us, Master,” the water Elemental warned him. “It is in their own personal interest to try to break free, after all.”

“Well, it was a thought,” he grunted. “I could tell you to threaten them with retaliation from me if they try to break free, but I doubt that would hold much water.”

The water Elemental tittered with laughter.

“Well, I haven’t seen you two in a long time,” Kimmie said as she came up, with Mist. “How have you been?”

“It has been well, Mistress,” the water Elemental said aloud.

“More preparations?” Mist asked.

Tarrin nodded. “My earth and Fire Elementals are checking over what I just did to make sure it was good. These two are going to go back home and warn the Elementals of the battle, so any that get summoned here know what’s going on. It might make a difference.” He looked to the two Elementals. “I’ll release you now and summon you back in half a day, so you can tell me how it went. Is that alright?”

They both assured him it was, and he released them. Both Elementals vanished in a puff of mist, and Tarrin rubbed his paws together. “I’m not sure how much help that’s going to be, but you never know.”

“You act like we’ll be facing an army ten times our size, my mate,” Mist noted.

“I know Shaz’Baket, Mist. She’s up to something. I’m going to assume we’re up against the wall until I see what she has planned. You don’t know her the way I do.”

“You won’t know her much longer,” Mist growled.

“I certainly hope so.”

Tarrin had never been very good at waiting.

Were-cats were not waiters. Creatures who existed in the moment, with a dim awareness of the past and not much concept of the future, did not wait well. Knowing that it would make him short tempered, he withdrew from everyone else and lost himself in the Weave, trying to learn more, learn as much as possible before the armies got there and the fighting began…but there wasn’t much to learn. So, instead, he spent most of that time with his awareness floating through the Weave, keeping a distant eye on many things at once, seeing just as much as the Elarans could up on their moon, looking down on the land of Pyrosia in the night.

He saw many things. To the west, He saw Pyrosians in distant villages rejoicing that their Priests could speak to the One once again, that he had not abandoned them…and he saw those Priests with slightly surprised looks on their faces. The One was honoring their agreement already, ordering them to dismiss any Demons they had summoned and forbidding them from ever summoning another, and ordering his Priests to begin preaching that the taint of the non-humans had been purged from them without destroying them, and they were no longer Defiled. The One told those far-flung Priests to begin preaching tolerance of the non-humans, for since they were no longer Defiled, they were no longer a threat to the purity of the people of the One.

Quite the clever talking there, Tarrin had to admit. The One explained his absence by saying he had crusaded personally to cleanse the non-humans, and had succeeded. He even claimed to bring the purity of light into the “witchcraft” used by some people, making it good magic, and no longer a thing to fear…for it would no longer Defile those who might use it.

The story had a few holes in it big enough to walk through, but Priests were Priests, and they would obey blindly. And the simple folk of Pyrosia would accept the new teachings without questioning them. The Priests of the One had beaten questions out of them a long time ago.

Tarrin had to grudgingly admit, the One was honoring his word. He was sure it was making the One scream, but he was starting to bring his people into a more accepting mindset, as he had promised.

To the south, he saw the army slogging through his rain and mud to reach Pyros. They were on a forced march, and their advance scouts would be encountering and dying to the Selani outward scouts in a matter of hours. Tarrin almost pitied them for what those scouts were about to get into. The Selani outward scouts were waiting for them. The first clashes of this battle would happen far from Pyros. Behind that army, there was nothing. They had destroyed every town, village, and farm on their march northward, killing or capturing the inhabitants and torching and killing all the crops and livestock.

To the east, Shaz’Baket personally herded her vast army towards Pyros on a murderous pace, where humans were being carried by larger Demons in shifts so they didn’t get exhausted slogging through waist-deep mud. That was actually rather clever, showing again that Shaz’Baket had a mind that one had better respect. She had gained more ground than Tarrin had expected, and he saw that she was now only half a day behind the southern army. Behind Shaz’Baket, minor Demons held humans in check in the larger towns, keeping them alive for some reason, but every village, hamlet, and farmstead had been leveled. In Verix, those who survived the clash between the Demon Lord and Demon’s Bane were not moving towards Arten, the closest city to the north. They were all humans, Tarrin saw; the Demons had abandoned their mortal chattel and had vanished, probably to attend their Master on Auromar.

To the north, there was disorganization. There had been a rather small Demon army up there, only about ten thousand, marching on the Iron Mountain, but Darax’s Duran army had effectively shattered them, and they made their way towards Pyros in bits and pieces. They hadn’t expected the Durans to flank them as they approached the mountains and hit them.

And far to the east, on a barren wasteland of gray soil and bare rock, Tarrin’s shadow stalked the Demon Lord. To Tarrin’s astonishment, there was a massive citadel there on the southern central coast of the continent, a city the size of Suld with a fortress of massive dimensions, with half-built walls and buildings around it, covered by a thick pall of clouds that hid it from the Elaran eyes above. The Demons were building a city! And there, on Auromar, the mystery of the missing Demons had been solved. They were there. They were building the huge city and citadel, and would serve as the defending army protecting their lord if the natives of Pyrosia attacked.

There was…a sense there. The Demon Lord had invested some of his own power into that place, a place that Sorcery could not enter. It was a bubble of the Abyss incurring into the material plane, a conjunction of two dimensions, where the Abyss and Pyrosia occupied the same space, a place where Demonic powers would work. Tarrin had never sensed it there before, but then again, it was so far away, it wasn’t a surprise. Within that citadel, the Demon Lord had all of its powers, but only within that citadel.

Now he understood. The Demon Lord had decided to play the waiting game. From that bastion, he could simply dig in and rebuild his army one summoned Demon at a time, while waging a war of attrition from an unassailable continent across the straits. Shaz’Baket was going for the fast victory, but if she failed, the Demon Lord had prepared a place where they could stand against their foes.

When they finished here, that was where Tarrin had to go. He could see that now. His shadow would not attack that place by itself. It would wait for Tarrin, and they would attack it together.

And now Tarrin could understand why the shadow did what it did. It attacked the Demon Lord before that place was finished, trying to finish it before it could retreat to that fortress, where it would be much harder to kill.

“Wait for me,” he called out to his shadow, fixing his ghostly eyes upon it, where it loped easily towards the construction site, basically staying out of sight and out of reach of the Demon Lord until it was time to destroy him. “I see what’s been happening now. When we finish here, I’ll come, and together we will finish this.”

The shadow stopped, looked upwards towards the strand from which Tarrin was looking, and shook his head. He crooked his finger towards the strand.

“I can’t come now, things are about to come to a head around here.”

The shadow pointed towards the distant citadel and looked deliberately at him.

“What do you mean?”

The shadow shaded his eyes and looked towards the citadel meaningfully.

“Look again? Hold on.”

Tarrin shifted his awareness to a strand close to the citadel, and looked again. He could see the huge, heavy black stone monstrosity before him, and could feel the Demon Lord inside. He could see an army of Demons hauling stone, using whips on human slaves who were doing the same, rushing to build walls and buildings, as some continued building on one of the wings of the citadel fortress. He didn’t see anything that would warrant immediate action—

Then he felt it. The strand he was occupying moved. It was being pushed back, pushed away, slowly but inexorably, so slowly he hadn’t sensed the disruption back in the Heart, but now that he was here, he could feel the push coming from the citadel. The conjunction was growing. It was getting bigger, expanding, by a finger every minute.

That was why his shadow was so impatient. Given time, that conjunction would grow larger and larger, expanding the sphere of influence of the Demon Lord.

Sphere of influence….

That was how it did it. A sphere of influence…the Demon Lord was making mortals worship it as a god! That was establishing him as a divine power on this world. That was how it had the power to fight back against his shadow! They had to be close to the Demon Lord, probably in the citadel itself, but it had true believers, true worshippers. Without an Elder God here to establish any kind of rules about the gods, the Demon Lord was exploiting that divine anarchy by establishing its own order…the conjunction. Just as Tarrin had done so to make the wish spell work the way he intended, the Demon Lord was using the same trick.

He felt the resistance around him. The Weave was why the conjunction grew so slowly. It was resisting it, it was trying to maintain a different order on the land, resisting the alteration of things. The Demon Lord moved very slowly, very lightly, very gently, pushing out with a gentle touch that hadn’t alarmed Tarrin as to what was going on…which was only smart. It had to know that if Tarrin knew what was going on over here, he’d have attacked the citadel immediately and mercilessly. But it had worked, the conjunction was large enough now that Tarrin couldn’t strike directly at the citadel with Sorcery, since the rules were different inside that bubble. In there, the Demon Lord was the one in control, and it was large enough now to offer the Demon Lord a modicum of protection by giving it time to react. But, it still wasn’t big enough. Tarrin could invade that bubble and use the Firestaff, and his shadow could use the sword, and the One could use his own divine power to undo what was being done, allowing them to engage and kill the Demon Lord. No, it didn’t want to be discovered yet. It didn’t want to risk it. It wanted Shaz’Baket to destroy the Weave and give the Demon Lord the freedom to expand that sphere to cover all of Auromar, all of Pyrosia, and maybe more, which would guarantee its victory. It knew that Tarrin had built a Weave once, it didn’t doubt that he could do it again, so it had to enact its own control over the land to guarantee the victory, and do it quickly, before what it was doing on Auromar was discovered and Tarrin moved to put a stop to it. For the Demon Lord, the fast destruction of Pyros and the Weave was the key to victory. It was why Shaz’Baket was now on a forced march to Pyros, she had to get there as fast as possible, before Tarrin found where the Demon Lord ran off to, and discovered its secret.

For Tarrin, the fast destruction of Shaz’Baket and her army was critical so he could get to Auromar and stop the Demon Lord.

A darkly humorous irony that the needs of both sides hinged on a hasty battle at Pyros.

He felt the Demon Lord suddenly reach out, as if it sensed something amiss. Tarrin masked himself within the Weave, hiding from that seeking eye, and felt it pass over him. If the Demon Lord knew that Tarrin knew what was going on here, he might order Shaz’Baket to pull back and keep the threat of attacking Pyros there to hold Tarrin in place. He couldn’t allow that, he had to deal with Shaz’Baket as quickly as possible, to remove her threat.

He returned to his shadow. “I see what you’re talking about, but I can’t pull out of here right now. The growth is slow, Bane, I can afford to wait a little bit. Give me two days, and only two days,” he told it. “It won’t grow enough to be dangerous in two days. By then, we should have things wrapped up here, and I can also bring along some help. I’m sure the One would love to help break up this little party,” he grunted. “But that’s all the time I can give myself. If we haven’t finished here in two days, I’ll have to leave Pyros and help you there. Is that alright?”

The shadow considered it, then abruptly sat down and put the sword in his lap, nodding.

“Two days. I’ll be right where you are, in person, with the One in tow, in two days. Be ready for us.”

The shadow nodded, and Tarrin withdrew from the Weave, returning to his mortal body. “One!” he boomed in a loud voice. “We need to talk. Now!”

The One appeared directly before him by magic. “What is it, Tarrin?”

“We have a problem,” he growled, then used Sorcery to build an Illusion of what he’d seen on Auromar, explaining what the Demon Lord was doing.

“By the Highgod,” the One gasped. “We must put an end to it!”

“I know, but we need to stay here. If we lose the Weave, it’s going to give the Demon Lord free reign. I felt the resistance, One, the Weave is the only thing holding the conjunction back. If we lose the Weave, the Demon Lord wins. So we have to stay here. But, it’s growing, and we can’t wait long or the Demon Lord will have so much room inside that it’ll be very hard to get at him. So, we have two days,” he said. “Even if we have to leave in the middle of the battle, we have to get there to put a stop to it.” He looked to the east. “It may not be an issue. The southern army will arrive tonight, and Shaz’Baket has her army on a forced march. It will get here tomorrow morning.” He growled. “She’ll attack as soon as she resets her lines. She’ll send the southern army in the instant it hits the field. They’re trying to keep my attention on them, hide what the Demon Lord is doing. And it almost worked,” he admitted. “I was ignoring the Demon Lord, seeing Shaz’Baket as the bigger threat. And all this time, Shaz’Baket was the decoy.”

“Not entirely a decoy, Tarrin, but she did do her job of holding our eyes on her,” the One said. “Praise be to your shadow for seeing what we did not, and acting.”

“Amen.”

“Mayhap, striking at Shaz’Baket now would be prudent.”

“No, if I do that, she might slow down, and we don’t want that right now,” he grunted. “Let her come. We’ll deal with her here, when she can’t back off and stall.”

“She may not do that anyway.”

“I know, but if I start laying waste to her army now, they may realize I know what’s going on, and pull back and just threaten to attack to give the Demon Lord more time,” he reasoned. “We can’t allow that. They want to kill me and destroy the Weave as fast as possible, so let them keep right on doing it. It only helps us.”

The first clashes between the Demons and the defenders were far to the south of Pyros, between bands of Selani scouts and scouts for the Demon army. Those clashes ended quickly and eternally for the attackers, even the Demons sent out to scout. But the Selani didn’t press the issue, they simply backed up and continued to kill scouts as the army advanced, staying out of its way and blinding it to what was ahead by killing off its forward eyes. Then, about an hour after midnight, the Selani returned to Pyros and reported that the army was only an hour away, and they had pulled all the bridges over the quagmire of mud Tarrin had set to rob them of any easy route to Pyros. When the Selani pulled back, everyone knew that the preparations were over. The battle was about to begin.

The alarm went out, and the army mobilized. Men rushed to their positions, armor was donned, weapons were given one final check, artillery was primed and prepared, ammunition and gunpowder stocked and readied. Sulasian Rangers strung their bows, Wikuni musketmen loaded their weapons, and both human and Elaran Wizards loaded spell components into pouches on their belts and bandoliers as everyone rushed about. The skyships were manned, as Wikuni crews unfurled sails and Sorcerers and Wizards assigned to those ships rushed aboard, and one by one, they rose up out of the moat and into the sky. Dragons formed up and waited in their area, saving their strength by staying on the ground until it was time, and the first wave of defenders manned the wooden palisades built upon the heavy outer wall.

And there, they waited.

They didn’t wait long. To the south, for those who could see in the darkness of night, there was a thin cloud of dust that did not approach, as the enemy marched over the first dry ground they’d encountered in days and then ended up right back in mud. Moments later, the Demons were visible, marching at the head of a column of seventy thousand Demons and nearly thirty thousand humans, a massive force that was still outnumbered by the nearly two hundred thousand men and women manning the defenses of Pyros.

As they approached, Tarrin, Miranda, Camara Tal, and the One could all feel it. Now that they were close enough, in person, they could sense it. Now they knew why the humans didn’t run.

They were possessed. Demonic power was housed in their bodies, and Tarrin could see that they were being controlled.

Tarrin and the One rose up over the walls to get a personal look at the adversary, and see the humans for themselves.

It all snapped together in that instant. Everything. The Demons in Auromar, not all of them were building the city. They were controlling the humans here, fighting from a position of safety while allowing their puppets to face the danger. This was one of Shaz’Baket’s surprises, for those humans would have absolutely no fear of death. They would be like the undead in the battle of Suld, savage brutes that would be hard to kill and unafraid in the face of overwhelming odds. In that state, they would not feel pain. They wouldn’t fall to a sword in the chest. They would have to be dismembered or decapitated to take them out of the fight.

“Can you break the connection?” the One asked him.

He shook his head. “It’s not actually magic, it has nothing to do with the Weave. It’s internal,” he answered. “Even if I cut off the army from the Weave completely, it wouldn’t free them. Only one spell I know of can do it.”

“Exorcism,” the One nodded. “But it cannot be cast on large numbers.”

“Can you free them? They’re your subjects.”

“Nay, I lack the power to affect more than one at a time. I too am limited in this instance.”

“I know. We’ll have to deal with them as they are,” he surmised.

“I will go warn Kang.”

Word of the nature of the humans was filtered down quickly, warning all soldiers that they had to be decapitated or dismembered, that they would not react to wounds like normal humans.

The enemy army seemed to pause as it took stock, saw that there were no Wards up defending the city, no magical barriers or protections. It was an invitation to attack, an invitation that the Demons would find irresistible. But they all flinched and looked away when the Conduit in the center of all those heavy fortifications flared with a brilliant light, so bright it transformed night into day, illuminating the huge army for the defenders and ensuring they did not use the cover of darkness to move troops. The troops began to move, circling the city, and Tarrin could see that they were setting up to attack from the east.

“Daughters, I need you,” Tarrin called as he descended back to the ground. “Let’s get this overwith,” Tarrin told Kang.

“Aye. Begin the attack!” Kang boomed. “Send the order, begin the attack! What are you going to do, Tarrin?”

“I’m going to take a big bite out of that army,” Tarrin answered. “I’m going to kill everything I possibly can.”

“Good luck but remember, don’t overexert yourself,” Kang said as his four daughters rushed in from outside the inner compound. “You need to be strong if you have to protect yourself if they get this far.”

“We’re here, father!” Jasana shouted. “Let’s kick some Demon butt!”

Quickly, the four female Were-cats joined into a Circle with their father. He lifted them all up into the brilliantly lit Conduit, so they could get a line of sight on their foes. As always when he Circled with Jasana, he felt almost drunk with power, a power no mortal was ever supposed to have, so much power he felt he could change the orbit of the moon or sink entire continents into the sea. All that massive power was focused on the army, though, as Tarrin studied it as it made a mad dash along the perimeter of the heavy mud, moving not in elements and formations, but all at once, staying together as best they could.

That just made it easy.

Weaving together a tangled jumble of Fire, Air, Water, Divine, and token flows of the other spheres to give the spell the power of High Sorcery, Tarrin generated a blinding aura of light around his paws, and then, when he snapped down and released the spell, a brilliant white-hot bar of light blasted from his paws, almost fifty spans across, a Sunbolt of such magnitude and so hot that it would vaporize stone when it struck.

Almost instantly, Tarrin felt a pressure from the army, and then a dark, shimmering plane appeared, a flat surface of discongruent realities. It was a shield, and when Tarrin’s spell hit it, it was stopped.

He recoiled in shock. That was almost unbelievable! Now he saw how Shaz’Baket was going to get around Tarrin. It took him only a moment to find the human that did it, a human carrying the mark of Gruz branded on his forehead. He was a vessel, a focus allowing Gruz to use his power here directly, without fear or retaliation, just like the mafeli that Val used at the battle of Suld. It was a trick he’d seen Shaz’Baket use before, but it made it no less effective for repeating, since this human Tarrin couldn’t simply destroy from within the Weave. This was different. Tarrin couldn’t interfere in the connection between Gruz and this human in any way, they could only kill him. Tarrin couldn’t stop the magic the human used, since it was coming from the Demon Lord, but he could counter it. Magic was magic once it manifested in the material plane, no matter its source. That was how he had to attack it.

The ground, he thought to his daughters. We can’t attack it directly.

The fault lines you placed, father. They’re almost to one of them, Jula thought in reply, echoing among the five. Look.

That should work. I don’t think they can stop that, Rina said. Father always says physics can be stronger than magic. Once all that lava gets going, they can’t just make it stop.

Let’s do it. Get ready.

The formation rushed around the city, moving to attack from the east, but then they turned and charged the wall before they reached the fault line. Tarrin cursed and changed tactics, even as he reached out. “Sapphire, Tenshale, I need you,” he called. Both dragons, far below, turned and looked up at him. “See this human? He’s a focus for the Demon Lord,” he said, showing them an Illusion, formed between them. “He can stop my magic, but he’s got limits. I need you to both hit him at the same time from two sides, so I can hit him in a way he can’t stop.”

Sapphire looked back up at him and nodded, and the two dragons immediately took off from their bailey. Tarrin refocused the Circle on the ground in front of the formation as it charged towards the wall, even as the first cannonballs started landing among them. Demons were blown apart as cannonballs brought from Sennadar, weapons against which they had no immunity, tore them to shreds in loud explosions of dirt and smoke. The two dragons split up even as four more took off, including Nightshade, and twenty skyships came around the mountain from their reserve position well away from the fighting, descending to attack. Tarrin watched them carefully, timed them, and then worked out where the human was going to be when they struck. The two dragons dove on the army from two sides, and in unison, they unleashed intertwining columns of lightning, blasting at him. The human focus for Gruz reacted to those two attacks, defending himself with shields of dark magical power that stopped them, but as Tarrin expected, he expended only that power he needed to expend to protect himself, no more, no less. The ultimate in efficiency, which he would expect from a Demon Lord.

The ground under the army, already quivering from the charge of massive Demons, began to shake. Then it began to shudder. The human focus looked down in surprise and moved his arms down, but it was too late.

The ground under the focus exploded with a cataclysmic BOOM, sending tiny pieces of Demons and humans flying for thousands of spans in every direction. The focus didn’t raise his defense fast enough, and his body was shredded into less than what could fill a bucket. Debris and body parts rained down on the artillerymen and magicians on the first wall, who scrambled to take cover.

“ATTACK!” Tarrin’s voice thundered across the plain, audible for leagues in every direction, even as a titanic blast of pure magic lashed out from the Conduit, melting rock and incinerating hundreds of humans.

It was a wave of magical death and a rain of cannonballs and catapult stones. The front ranks of the attacking army withered away from the hellstorm, driving them back, but the sheer force of numbers caused that shrinking mass to inexorably creep forward. But the entire front of that mass vanished in another massive blast of magical power that erupted from the Conduit, magic that nothing could withstand now that the focus had been killed. The charge wavered for a split second, then exploded forward when Sapphire and Tenshale raked the column with their breath weapons right through the middle, killing hundreds in an immolation of pure lightning, to which the Demons were not immune like they were fire. Nightshade shrieked and dove on the column, enveloping it in her strength-stealing breath weapon. The Demons charged through the inky cloud unscathed, but no humans came out of that cloud alive.

Strange. Tarrin looked at the Demons, and wondered what they were doing. Instead of attacking in a long line and rushing the wall, they instead all grouped together and charged in a long line at one section of the wall. That was…inefficient, to put it kindly. What were they doing? It didn’t make any sense. They’d take far less casualties spreading out in a wide front and charging the wall.

Thousands died on that charge on the wall, charging through spells, cannonballs, and strafes of massive dragons unleashing deadly breath weapons, but they did not slow down. So many came, so fast, that they could not kill them all before they reached the wall. When the forward commanders saw that the Demons would reach the wall, they began pulling back. The catapults on the forward wall were destroyed as they raced down the ladders and rushed across the trap-laden first bailey. The last of the magicians off the wall set fire to the wooden scaffolds with magic as her companions were picking their way along pre-determined paths while the artillery masters on the second and third walls opened up, firing at trajectory arcs, and the skyships sailed over the walls and turned broadside. The withering magical attacks recommenced when they were in position.

As the defenders rushed through the bailey to reach the second wall, the first of the Demons reached the first wall. Some of them pounded on it and scratched at it with huge claws, but found that it was stronger than steel, while others started climbing it first. The first Demon to crest the wall, a glabrezu, appeared through the fire of the burning palisades, but his head exploded into black gore when a bullet fired from one of the new rifled muskets, with the new ballistic shaped bullets, went through his head and tore it apart. The body tumbled back into the seething mass of Demons and humans at the wall, scrambling to climb over. The first Demons over the wall all were shot by the rifled weapons, and then fell backwards back to the ground below.

One of the skyships saw a splinter element of the Demonic army splitting off further to the north and rushing the wall. The commander of the ship, a bull Wikuni, had the Sorcerer tending the flying device warn Dolanna, who relayed it to Kang, who rushed the order down. Artillery and cannons unused so far turned on the new threat and took aim, then began firing as the skyship and its partner turned and started attacking the element of about two hundred humans and Demons. Densheen sizzled between the skyships like an arrow fired from a bow, nearly capsizing one of the vessels, then she unleashed her breath weapon squarely at the center of that formation, strafing it from its left flank.

The explosion was teeth-jarring, shaking the walls of the inner compound. Densheen’s breath weapon triggered a huge explosion, the shockwave knocking her off her flight path and nearly sending her crashing into the wall herself. Her belly and tail nearly swept a few dozen defenders off the second wall as she recovered and pulled out of her diving spin, and she shakily veered off to the north as she tried to gain altitude. The bull Wikuni immediately reported in that something one of the humans was carrying had exploded, and exploded with terrific force. But even as he reported, the rest of that element rushed towards the wall, as the explosion had knocked both the dragon and the skyships out of position, and the artillery had only just begun to rain cannonballs down on the small element. Most of the rest of them were blown apart in a hail of cannonballs, but six of them managed to reach the wall alive. One of them was a Demon, a hezrou, carrying a large barrel on its back. That Demon immediately turned and slammed its back into the wall, without hesitation.

The resulting explosion was huge. The mighty, magically strengthened wall shook and shuddered, cracks appearing at its top as it resisted that explosive force, but it did not collapse.

“They are using gunpowder as bombs!” Sapphire called to Tenshale. “Report it to Dolanna immediately! We must keep those suicide attackers from reaching the wall, at any cost!”

“Clearly, they thought ahead,” Tenshale noted to her. “An effective way to bring down a wall without magic!”

“Less thinking, more talking,” Sapphire ordered as they both banked to the north to make another pass at the Demonic horde.

But stopping them all was not easy. The main host suddenly had dozens of small units rushing the wall all along the southeastern arc, Demons carrying huge kegs of gunpowder with enough bodies around them to make it hard to pick out the ones that had to be stopped. The artillery rained cannonballs in a large swath all through the southeastern arc, abandoning concentrating their fire on the main army to stop those attackers. The loss of sustained fire on the main army allowed Demons to manage to get over the wall alive, who then started rushing the second wall, charging through the stakes and pits and trenches and hedgerows of logs placed in the first bailey to slow down any invaders. Most of them didn’t get but a few steps before they were felled by musket fire or spells, but more Demons were behind them to trod on their melting bodies. Dragons and skyships peeled off from the main host to stop those bomb units, as huge explosions rocked the land beyond the wall, bombs detonated by spells or breath weapons before they could reach their target. But they could not stop them all.

The wall rocked from a detonation. And seconds later, another one, and then another. A moment later, another explosion in the same place on the wall caused it to bulge inward, and then it crumbled from the top outwards, a breach nearly twenty spans wide. As if on cue, the entire army turned and rushed towards the hole, nearly a longspan south of where they had made their initial attack.

“Now it gets ugly!” Ulger barked, commanding a defending squad of Knights near one of the Wikuni cannon batteries, almost directly across from the breach. “Focus all your fire on the ground behind that breach!” he boomed to the alligator Wikuni. “Archers, target that breach!” he called to the other side, to a complement of Sulasian archers and Duran crossbowmen. Ulger picked up a longbow himself and nocked an arrow from a nearby hanging quiver. “Let’s give them lots to think about!” he shouted, raising the bow as the alligator Wikuni barked orders that caused his cannons to be turned and elevated to fire at a lobbing trajectory that would land cannonballs behind the wall.

Demons poured through that breach in the wall, but they were cut down by a withering hail of arrows, crossbow quarrels, and musket balls. More and more Demons dove through the breach, shielding a host of humans, and to Ulger’s surprise, many of them were holding huge metal shields. They quickly organized into a phalanx of raised shields, and the hail of arrow fire started clattering off shields so heavy and thick that even musket balls couldn’t penetrate them completely. That phalanx started moving forward as Demons raced past them, moving slowly and carefully. Ulger watched them and saw that they were clearing the ground over which they moved of obstacles, clearing a path for those behind. “Sergeant!” Ulger barked. The alligator looked to him, and he pointed at the phalanx. “You got a crew good enough to land a cannonball right there?”

“I can hit it, no problem sir!” he shouted in reply. “Mart, direct line, line her up! Let’s break up that shield wall!”

The phalanx didn’t get far. The alligator Wikuni’s chosen cannon crew was a good shot with it, landing a cannonball right dead in the center of the formation. Men were blown in every direction, and they were peppered with arrows and musket balls. But, surprisingly, many of them simply got up with as many as ten arrows sticking out of them. Ulger cursed when he remembered the humans had to be hit in the head, that they felt no pain and wouldn’t be put off by any injury that didn’t literally tear them apart. “In the head, aim for the head!” he shouted to the archers and crossbowmen, then turned and waved at the musketmen on the barbican above and behind him. “Aim at the heads of the humans!” he shouted.

“That’s a tall order from this distance!” one of the Wikuni answered. “Muskets aren’t very accurate from this distance for a shot like that, sir Knight!”

“Archers, it’s yours!” Ulger called to the Sulasians. “Show them why a Ranger’s longbow is the most feared weapon in the West!”

“Save it, we got it!” the alligator called. “Let’s see them get up from this!” he added, firing one of the cannons personally. The cannonball ripped through the humans as they tried to reform their phalanx.

As Ulger worked to break up the phalanx, Demons charged across the ground in front of them. They fell at a blistering rate, but more and more Demons poured through the breach and over the wall. Several soldiers screamed and scrambled out of the way when a dragon’s blue-scaled head appeared over the wall. “Down, bipeds!” the dragon called in a male voice. The dragon, Sirocco, sucked in his breath, then unleashed a wide fan of lightning bolts in an arc before him at the Demons who had gotten ha