Xornian soldiers struggled against the warlock champions. These were no ordinary thralls, but skilled fighters with a powerful grasp of varied fighting techniques, some of the best armor available, and an absolute disregard for their personal safety.

They were not human either. These were creatures similar to the zombies he had skirmished against, tall dead-eyed monsters with hollow cheeks and sharp teeth who sighed with relief when Saul killed them.

Approaching the melee, he realized the warlocks’ ploy. These creatures had never meant to be flying cavalry. They had meant to crash inside the village and disrupt the backline. The bats’ only purpose had been to carry them.

“Brand!” Saul shouted when he spotted his young protegee matching blades with a tall, black-armored champion, “get to the walls, tell Jerryl to stop shooting these creatures down over the village!”

Brand nodded at Saul’s orders but couldn’t disengage from the creature’s relentless onslaught of blows.

Another man not as deeply involved in the fighting yet, called out, “I’ll take the message to the captain,” and turned away, dashing toward the ladders leading to the palisade.

From above, another arrow-riddled bat crashed into the ground and sent up a cloud of dust debris from the hut it smashed into. From the wreckage arose yet another tall and menacing figure.

Saul fired off another Fireball. He caught a rider midair just as a flurry of arrows brought down his flying monster. The champion was consumed in flames intense enough to turn his armor white-hot.

Saul was at Level 12, and the leveling up was certainly having an effect on all his spells, steadily improving them even if it had not unlocked anything new recently.

In the village there were now eight champions in, and one larger than the rest. His red-flickering armor was more ornate, and he stood a full head taller than the others. In Saul’s vision, a line of greenish magic linked the warrior to the others.

It did not escape his notice that this one did not immediately engage in the fight. Instead, he held back, watching and waiting.

Saul was pleased to see that Xornian troops fought with grim determination, unintimidated by the terrifying recklessness with which the creatures fought. Many soldiers would have quailed before such foes, but not these men. They stuck together, back-to-back and shoulder-to-shoulder, covering for each other where they could.

They were dying, however, all the same. As Saul looked round, a two-handed black blade lopped off the head of a Xornian warrior.

Saul headed straight for the leader. Slay the anchor, win the fight, he figured.

The tall figure to face Saul, hefting a huge battleax.

Saul lifted his hands and called the Catapult spell. He laughed as an enormous rock launched from him as if he’d been a siege engine. The creature swung its axe, conjuring a blast of green flames that smashed into and through the rock, shattering it.

“Nice,” Saul said out loud. “So, you have some magic of your own. Where is your power source? No sign of any channelers…”

Then he spotted the Sigil on the tall warrior’s axe blade. It gleamed sickly green, like the magic that flowed from the warrior to his underlings.

So, that was the source of the monster’s magic. A Sigil that was placed on the axe, granting the creature the ability to fire spells of its own to counter Saul’s magic.

The second time he swung the axe Saul felt as much as saw the magic. It was a blast of pure fear, and it hit him in the chest like a kicking horse. He was flung through the air, landed on his back, and lost his sword as well as the breath in his lungs.

He couldn’t stand. Pain and unnatural fear tore at him with paralyzing intensity.

Courage, he thought…or did the thought come from elsewhere? He did not stop to think.

All around him, the battle with the champions was now raging. The five remaining had grouped together, but the Xornian foot soldiers had pulled back to let the Raptor Riders fall upon them with a stunning charge.

Saul saw black smoke in the sky. So, the ditches must have been lit on fire now.

Courage.

He reached to his belt, fighting through raw fear such as he had never known in his life, fear that blinded, fear that choked, fear that was almost enough to kill.

Into his field of vision stepped the looming monstrosity he was fighting, a tall, terrible vision, with burning red eyes. It raised a gleaming axe high, ready to cleave Saul’s soul from his body.

His hands found cold glass, and he pulled a Courage potion from his belt and knocked it back.

Immediately, the spell was broken.

He rolled to the side as the axe sunk into earth where his neck had been. Saul leapt to his feet, turned, and unleashed a Fireball at point blank range at the monster’s face.

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This time, the creature had no chance to strike down his spell. Flames engulfed it entirely, turning the creature into a pyre of screaming rage and fiery pain. It struggled. Light flared across the runes of its armor as its magic sought to counter Saul’s.

Not one to leave things to chance, Saul stooped and grabbed up a Xornian infantry halberd from the ground, whirled it through the air and sank the blade deep into the champion’s neck.

The champion dropped his axe and staggered backward.

As it died, a control Sigil rose up from the monster’s chest, flickered, then vanished into dust and its connection to the others died.

Cheers erupted as the Xornians slew the remaining creatures within the village.

But the fight was far from over.

Saul turned his attention to a nearby wounded soldier who leaned against a wall with a pale smile on his bloodied features. Saul dropped to his knees next to him and used the spell that had been recently acquired with the School of Air—Healing.

A stream of pale blue light emanated from Saul’s hands. Surprisingly, he smelled the distinct scent of aniseed, the same scent his healing potions had.

The magic flowed over the man’s wound, quickly knitting it up. The bleeding stopped, and the color returned to the man’s face.

“Ah, by the gods, you’ve saved me!” the wounded man gasped, touching in amazement the spot where a formerly lethal wound had been replaced by a scar.

“You won’t die,” Saul said, “but you’ve still lost a lot of blood, and you’re in no condition to fight. Help get the other wounded to safety. We have a lull in the fighting in the village now. I must return to the wall.”

“You must heal the others, surely?” the man asked.

Cooldown Timer: Initiated

Spellcasting unavailable for: Five Minutes

Saul gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I cannot use my healing magic again just yet. I have to choose between healing and combat, my friend. Get the wounded to safety. Go on.”

The man left reluctantly, and Saul grimaced with regret for a moment before banishing the thought and heading back to the wall.

Things at the palisade had progressed about as he’d expected. The outermost ditch had been set afire, and now a barrier of flames roared between defenders and the attackers. They were trying to find a way across, but so far without success.

“Can you look and see what’s going on over there, use your magic?” Jerryl asked.

“Not yet,” Saul replied, shaking his head. “The champions in the village have been dealt with, however.”

“How many of ours are dead?” Jerryl asked.

“We’ve lost twelve,” he said, “and another fifteen or so are wounded badly enough to be taken out of action. Some of those I may be able to heal with my magic, but that will be a slow process, and I can’t make any guarantees.”

“I need you here if they attack again,” said Jerryl, pointing up to the bats that circled above, just out of bow shot. “But we are hugely outnumbered. If you can bring soldiers back into the fight, it will be worth missing your presence here for a few minutes.”

“Very well,” Saul said.

He made his way back to the wounded near the wall of a half-destroyed hut. Here, he moved from man to man, examining their wounds. As soon as he could, he brought his magic to bear. Some he could heal completely; others, due to the severity of their wounds, he could do little. The limits of his healing spell were painfully apparent.

He did what he could, but after five castings, the frustrating cooldown timer kicked into place again. “I have to wait before I can use another spell,” he had to say to the wounded.

One man died before the timer ran out.

His mouth set in a grim line, Saul helped bind the wounds of the others to try keep them alive. As soon as his timer finished, he used his spells again, using the healing spell five times more to relieve some of the worst affected of the soldiers.

This time, almost as soon as his timer ran out, he heard a shout from the walls. Jerryl gestured frantically for him to come over.

Saul glanced at the other men who needed healing. “I’ll come back,” he promised, then sprinted back to the walls.

Brand joined him. Zorea was in charge of the healers and the beds for the wounded which had been set up in the barracks in the middle of the village. She would not join the fight yet.

Saul and Brand reached the top of the wall and looked out. The view was not a pleasant one.

The second ditch had been fired as well, but something large strode through the black smoke. Several things, in fact.

“What are they?” Jerryl asked.

“I can’t tell,” Saul replied, shading his eyes. “They could be trolls. We saw that the warlocks can control such monsters.”

“The trolls we fought in the forest had flickering flames around them,” Brand said thoughtfully. “Perhaps they are resistant to fire in some way?”

“Trolls have native elemental resistances,” said Saul. “Different kinds can resist different sorts of magic, though all have resistance to earth spells. These trolls could be resistant to fire, that makes sense.”

“But how could Grimdir’s warlocks have tamed wild trolls to their will?” Jerryl wondered. “That’s a thing I’ve never heard of before.”

“There’s new magic here, that’s for sure,” Saul said. “If we survive this, we’ll perhaps have a chance to find out.”

“If we survive,” Jerryl repeated darkly.

Saul did not say it, but he knew that they had to survive. This village was the catalyst that began the whole sequence of terrible events leading to the faction wars. That was why he was fighting. He knew it, and he knew the importance of it. There was no question in his mind what he needed to do.

He had been placed here to turn the tides of fate, and he would succeed.

Saul’s timer finished, and he ran down to the wounded again, using three spell activations to heal the remaining men. Those he healed were wobbly on their feet. His magic did not restore them to full health, but it at least stopped them from dying.

“Get some food and water into them,” Saul ordered, “and let them rest. With luck, that will be enough to get them back in fighting order quick enough to make a difference.”

Back on the walls, the prospects looked dire. Flames roared in all four ditches now. The heat was intense, but the apparently fireproof trolls lumbered onwards through them. They set down great slabs of stone at multiple points to act as bridges over the flames.

Streams of black figures now poured across these makeshift bridges. Saul saw among them not only the warlock soldiers, but many smaller creatures, bone horrors, bulbous floating red sacks with a single red eye, and tall wraithlike figures flickering with red light that levitated a few feet above the ground. And everywhere there were squads of thralls, each with a warlock in charge.

Flashes of red and yellow surrounded the warlocks. They kept on summoning more monsters. Tall skeletons, lizard-like creatures in green armor with the heads of snakes, hosts of small black goblinoid figures, and many more creatures Saul had no name for approached the battlements.

“They have brought a whole army of monsters against us,” Jerryl muttered, “and beyond the flames, there are even more of them. I have a hundred warriors. Even with your magic, Saul, I don’t see how we can hope to survive this.”

“Perhaps we must go on without hope,” Saul said grimly. “That seems to be what I must do. I will not give up the fight. There is no hope at all in surrender.”

Jerryl turned to Saul and clasped his hand in a warrior’s grip.

“Whatever our fate,” he said. “We’ll meet it together.”

“Whatever our fate,” Saul repeated.