Chlorine gas was a monster of a thing. While I was a bit limited on exactly what it did and how my understanding was that it did something like turn the water in mucus membranes into hydrochloric acid. Based on the number of elves now clawing at their eyes and grasping their throats in agony that seemed likely.

When the defenders finally tore their eyes off of the action they fell upon me in horror. Several took a step back. Jina looked down to the other canisters, seeming to fear what they might contain. I couldn't blame them, it was unlikely they had any context for what they'd just seen, the monstrous pain dropped upon their enemy.

“Don't stop the attack, keep going!” I told them, there really wasn't time to gawk.

To our enemies credit, they responded quicker than I thought they would. After only about a minute of flailing in panic someone used magic to try and start dealing with the harmful gas. It looked like they tried to contest our singers for control of the weather for a moment, before deciding it would be easier to just move the clouds of death off to the sides. Magic was after all a finite resource, and saving what they could was probably important.

It would be more important now, as someone had to heal, or try to heal, the survivors. As soon as the clouds were clear several people rushed forward, grabbing who they could and pulling them back to their reforming lines. Not even Cino's people wanted to abandon their own to choke on their own blood.

Minutes passed where little other than exchanging fire was done. Our enemy had taken heavy losses to their forward force, losing about a quarter of the people we could see here. Sure, some of those would come back, but not all of them, and they were tied up. I took a few shots here and there at people who they were trying to evacuate, and those trying to pull them away, after all taking out their healers would be magnificent if we could manage it.

Between the losses and the fact that the child soldiers they were using were burning themselves out slowly but surely a siege benefited us more than it did them, they seemed to know this. Their plan had clearly been to blitz the gate down and move into the city, but they had limited options to achieve that now.

The Westers divided the children into two groups, front and back, and they sent them to move. While the back group upped their fire from a few light shots to a veritable hail of spells the front group began to work their way forwards at speed, pushing themselves above the ground with magic.

Our shielding mages had to duck. Things were passing though all the time since they had to conserve their magic, but what was coming was quickly overwhelming their abilities. They needed to prioritize, pull back their protections to what had to be safe, the siege engines, the casters, the gate. Other areas of the wall were pelted, and even if the spells weren't massive, there were many. I ducked behind a raised portion of the wall, letting the bolts and arrows of energy hiss and ping around me.

The city wasn't doing well though, many of these bits of magic were flying past, into nearby houses and businesses, ripping away chunks of wall and the living wood that often composed parts of homes here. People inside would probably be fine, but anyone caught in that hail would suffer terribly.

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However, before the charge made it even halfway to us the storm began to fade. A quick peek from my hiding spot showed me why, the ones they were using couldn't handle it, they were dropping like flies. One by one the back line fell, some seeming to shake on the ground, some immolating themselves. The others didn't stop though, too afraid of what would happen if they did.

At that moment another problem became clear, that none of our people were firing upon the charging unit. A few were still attacking the opposing army, but nobody was opposing the force marching quickly upon our gate, a gate they couldn't be allowed to get to.

“I'll do it,” came the shaky voice of Jina as I began to raise my hand to strike. “This is my duty.”

Tears poured down her face as she brought her hands before her. I'd seen her do magic, and on some level I knew that she was incredibly powerful, but this drove the point home. Energy poured into a small ball, about the size of a marble, purple and swirling. She was sweating bullets with the effort of it, but she didn't stop, didn't slow.

With a final flick of her hand the healer released what she'd been preparing. The orb soared out, meeting the middle of the pack of charging younglings. There was a silent flash of purple, and as one they fell, eyes sightless, bodies tumbling as they died mid-step, like puppets with their strings cut. Everything in the radius of that baleful burst just died, nothing more, nothing less.

As one the battlefield froze, the only sound for a heartbeat being the gasping and weeping of the woman beside me. She'd fallen too, on her hands and knees. Her aura looked weakened, like she'd used all her power for that one spell, and maybe she had, making sure that those innocents didn't suffer more than they needed to, making sure they came to no more harm than she had to inflict to save others.

From the instant of silence the roar of battle redoubled, both sides furious at what had happened. The rain of magic stopped as the last of the children burned themselves out, and both sides continued with their bombardment.

Now was the moment, and I used my magic to grab the rest of the containers, huffing as I spent the power I'd kept in reserve to hurl them at the enemy. This time however they didn't head to the area before the lines, but rather to the line of battle itself, trying to spread themselves out among the Wester forces.

Not wanting to deal with gas again the enemy sniped them all from the air in a volley of kinetic bolts, shattering the steel containers into nothing but scrap. Our enemy had learned, but not enough. These canisters contained not gas, but liquid, liquid that spent a mere breath looking like water as it began to rain, then it met the air.

The liquid ignited, and our enemies who'd rained magic upon us got a rain of fire in return. Some of them tried to fall to the ground and roll, hoping to extinguish the flames, it didn't help. A few covered parts of themselves completely, making sure no air could get to the fire, that didn't help either. More than one mage who'd managed to avoid getting drenched began shooting out water, hoping to douse something, that made things worse in that it didn't douse the flames and began to release a very familiar yellow gas.

Finding a source of fluorine had been difficult, but some of the rocks here had it, and chlorine tri-fluoride was the absolute worst thing I both knew the chemical formula for and how to store. It burned... well pretty much anything. Soil, rocks, trees, animals, houses, bridges, glass, ashes, asbestos, and pretty well anything else. It couldn't be put out, and I didn't even know how toxic it would be, but if you were little more than a burned goop a bit of poisoning was the least of your worries. Even the light spray that much of the enemy army had gotten would be... well... enough.

The Westers panicked, but it did them no good, nothing did, many, many of their people died screaming. About this I felt no regret, they'd made their decisions, they'd heaped horrors upon us, now they could suffer the same. They could watch and do nothing as those they cared for perished, as we had, waiting for the flames to go out as we pummeled them with ever more death from our walls.

They broke, too tired, too scared, too hurt, and began to turn back towards the forest to flee. Before they got far though a light began to appear in the trees, painful blue and sparking. What looked like lightning topped over the towering plants, arcing and snapping, making itself known. At first I didn't realize what it was, and then it me, our efforts had attracted a bigger fish.

The enemy army halted their flight, slowing as the mages called out. They halted their run away from us, but split, split so that we could see as their Ancient strode forward onto the field.

Cino had finally arrived.