Countless Mugrankos from Admiral King Sepaxo’s ships bombarded the coastal defenses of Sicahn without any meaningful counterfire at all. On the voyage to Sicahn, much of the Methrangian fleet had been set ablaze just miles off the coast by barrages of the exploding shots from the Nitandran vessels. Ballistae mounted on the Methrangian ships couldn’t penetrate the coral armor of the Nitandran ships, not at that range at any rate. There only option had been close the distance, which exacted a fearsome toll on the Methrangians.

Nalt had never seen anything like it in his life. He wondered how it was that the Nitandrans had never managed to seize the southern coast altogether as opposed to simply menacing it. There must have been a vagary in the histories that he missed. As he had seen it up until that point, the lopsided advantage enjoyed by the Nitandrans allowed for no challenge. Nineteen Nitandran ships had been lost to sink over one hundred Methrangian vessels. Burning wrecks and screaming sailors littered the seas to the south of Sicahn.

"Natog!" a Nitandran officer screamed to the Mugranko batteries on the starboard side of the Prince Cadafaxo. Nalt didn't understand many of the Nitandran words, which were still utilized in combat despite Nitandrans largely speaking common, but he understood that one. It, of course, meant "Loose!"

Within a second, the batteries of Mugrankos promptly loosed every bit of ordinance they had at a portion of the fortress serving as a barracks on Sicahn's southeast side. While no one projectile's explosion was that impressive, the dozens upon dozens of them peppering the fortress made for a spectacular sight. Bits of stone flew high into the air, peppering formations of troops below.

"Never actually seen a proper battle," Grenna said to Nalt and the others gathered on the Prince Cadafaxo's deck. She wore heavier armor than Nalt had ever seen her wear before and had a long sword at her side instead of her usual daggers. Then again, as Grenna said, they'd never been part of something like this. "It's fucking horrifying."

"You're too young, but..." Ovigon began, but Grenna cut him off.

"Quiet, you!" she said, acerbic and friendly at the same time. "Anyway, be ready. I expect we'll land soon."

Nalt laughed to himself remembering the conversation he watched Grenna have with Admiral King Sepaxo in his luxurious state room at the center of the ship. She had tried to convince him that the assistance she provided in laying out Sicahn's defenses meant she and her allies wouldn't have to be part of the assault on the city itself. Sepaxo had laughed so hard that the tentacles drooping off his face jiggled in amusement.

"My salty and tempestuous Grenna, if I may call you that name," Sepaxo sighed following Grenna's insistence on favorable terms, "even if I did owe you that, which I'm not prepared to concede, I would still not be inclined to grant such a thing. I'm thankful for your advice, just as I'm thankful for my sailors for bringing the fleet to the shores of the continent in one piece. That has never absolved them of combat responsibilities."

The jagged black part of the Admiral King's eyes narrowed as he spoke, the green portion of his eyes seemingly squeezing it down.

"It was worth a stab at it," Grenna sheepishly replied.

"You are a former mercenary captain and I understand your attempts to avoid needless death, but those days are behind you," Sepaxo scoffed, grasping a large cup of Nitandran blue wine with his tentacle-like hands. He downed almost the entire cup in one swig, momentarily revealing his odd beak of a mouth as he did. "This is war. Proper war, not the shameful sorties of mercenaries. There's honor in this and I expect everyone, new allies included, to behave accordingly."

As Nalt watched the Mugranko barrages upon Sicahn, he wondered what "honor" there truly was in such a thing. A handful of ballistae on the city's outer defenses provided some resistance, but the bolts clanged off the sleek coral hulls of the Nitandran vessels. Some shots would make their way onto the decks of ships, killing a small number of crewmembers, but nothing much to speak of. The Prince Cadafaxo avoided being hit at all, with one ballista bolt falling haplessly into the empty sea in front of them.

The Admiral King watched the battle unfold from an observation platform on the ship's starboard side, a small group of similarly dressed Nitandrans conferencing with him as he did. Judging from a stiffening of their postures and more active discussions, Nalt believed that the order to land would come at any minute. Following an order Sepaxo barked back at the retinue standing behind him, several Nitandrans took up their strange instruments and loosed a rapid serious of blasts that sounded more like claps of thunder than the howling winds of their earlier encounter.

Nitandran soldiers swarmed onto the deck from the staging rooms below, all of them clad in their multi-hued fish scale armor and grasping their glistening crystalline spears and light elegant bows. Nalt marveled at their speed. Even with their bizarre four-pronged boots, their legs carried them so fluidly that Nalt rubbed his eyes to be sure he wasn't dreaming. Officers, each wearing dark green hats that fit over their triangular heads, gave speeches in the old Nitandran language as drums sounded out from ships further back from the Prince Cadafaxo.

"I guess it's time, eh?" Grenna forced a smile and put a simple bronze helmet over her head, tucking her red hair into the back of her armor.

Nalt still wore his enchanted breastplate that he had taken from Sicahn. Mastohlt, Bafan, Wella, and Ovigon all wore breastplates from that mission, too. Under it, Nalt wore heavy studded leather and had a massive war axe strapped to his back along with two small throwing axes at his hips. He was well-prepared on that score. What he wondered, however, was how he might use his new knowledge of the Ceunan Aura in the fight to come beyond just closing wounds.

Wish I'd spent more time figuring that out, he mused. Well, too late now.

Small boats were lowered off to the ship's starboard side and troops began loading in, about twenty to a ship. This repeated up and down the Nitandran fleet, with thousands of Nitandrans preparing for landing to cheers and music. The tentacle-like hand of a Nitandran captain fell upon Grenna's shoulder, startling her. The captain pointed toward a boat loading right in front of them.

"Ours," the captain said in his gurgling voice. "You will follow."

"Alright then," Grenna cheerfully replied and flicked her wrist for the others to accompany her.

Along with a dozen Nitandran spearmen, they lowered into the water, Nalt taking one of the peculiar curved oars. Just before they reached the sea, the Admiral King called out to his men.

"Fight well, my sons!" Sepaxo bellowed, his voice cutting even above the clamor of the battle underway. "Either you sleep on land tonight, or I'll bury you in the sea! May the tide bless you!"

"The tide blesses us!" the soldiers, in their thousands, shouted in return, most raising their spears high.

Stolen novel; please report.

Nalt laughed as he saw Grenna's wince at the Nitandrans' cheer, but they didn't have much time to reflect upon it as the need to row took over. Bells rang and drums beat from Sicahn as the defenses tried to reconstitute themselves. Nalt couldn't spend time thinking about that, however. He had to put all of his energy into swinging the oars of the boat alongside three Nitandrans while the rest prepared to land.

A boat next to theirs exploded into fractured pieces of coral as a ballista bolt from the shore sailed down into it. It first impaled a Nitandran soldier before busting the hull in half and sending the others flying into the air or overboard.

Don't think about it. Just get to the harbor, Nalt reminded himself. Just get to the harbor.

Shouts from boats closer to the harbor announced what they had all dreaded: Archers. The Methrangian forces began loosing volley after volley of arrows at the boats. The gurgled screams of Nitandran soldiers were only drowned out by the orders for archers and mages in the boats to return the favor.

"Mastohlt, can you hit them from here?" Grenna shouted.

"I can try," Mastohlt mumbled as he stood in the boat above Nalt. He formed two fiery orbs above either hand and hurled them like balls over the Nitandran ships in front of them and into the harbor. Nalt couldn't see what happened, but judging from Mastohlt conjuring another two orbs, it must've met with some success. "Barely. Just barely."

"Barely's good enough!" Grenna shouted back "We're almost there!"

Nalt briefly glanced over his shoulder. Indeed, the stone docks of the harbor were right there, packed tight with Nitandran soldiers fighting Methrangians in close combat. He and the three Nitandran rowers quickened their pace. Sicahn's bells were near enough that their clangs became deafening. Bodies of both Nitandrans and Methrangians floated in the harbor with arrows sticking out of them. Others were charred from the Mugrankos or from mages' fiery bolts. Nalt breathed deeply and closed his eyes, seeing a flash of white light and those golden eyes as he did.

"Hard left!" Grenna shouted to the rowers. "Bring us up along the dock and let's get going!"

Nalt and the other rowers did as she asked. The coral hull scraped against the stone pier. Nalt instantly dropped the oar and brought his war axe out from around his back. He jumped from the boat to the pier in a single big leap. The others, including the Nitandrans with them, climbed out more gradually.

At the end of the pier, leading into the city, he saw Nitandran spearmen fighting heavy Methrangian infantry all clad in plate. With fluid pivots, some Nitandran soldiers seemed able to find weak points or trip up the heavy infantry and then take advantage while they floundered on the ground. The heavy axes of the Methrangians, however, easily cleaved through the Nitandran armor and would sometimes nearly cut in half the Nitandran spearmen. Nalt was eager to join the fray to give the Nitandrans assistance.

Once the rest of the boat was assembled, without thinking twice, he began charging forward at the vanguard, several Nitandran spearmen at his sides. His pulse grew fast and heavy. It shook his eyes and teeth. He looked for the best spot to engage the enemy. At last, where a Nitandran fell to one of the plate-clad behemoths, he saw his chance.

Jumping forward, he swung his axe up from the left and knocked his opponent off balance. Hix war axe had cut deep into the plate, but, more importantly, it knocked the soldier back on his heels and he struggled to regain his footing. It was too easy. He then swung down from right to left through the shoulder armor and into the soldier's chest. A horrid crunch. It only penetrated a bit, but the force had clearly broken the man's neck as he fell like his bones had been removed.

Grenna took advantage of the new gap in the line to match swords with a lighter sword-wielding opponent a rank back from the heavy infantry. Quick on her feet, she dodged a swing of the man's sword and ran her blade straight into his open neck. He coughed up blood and fell to the ground.

Mastohlt thinned out the ranks of heavy infantry to the left, lobbing orbs of fire over the heads of the Nitandran spearmen and into the reserves that had been waiting to join the battle. Their plate turned orange and melted onto their flesh while they remained trapped in their armor. The horrible echoing wails from their molten tombs sickened Nalt, but he kept his mind focused on the task at hand.

A Methrangian swordsman, a relatively thin bearded man clad in chain mail, jumped over two bodies and tried to strike Nalt from the left. Nalt parried his feeble attack easily, using the shaft of his war axe to absorb the strike. The swordsman tried then simply running Nalt through with a stab to his abdomen. Again, Nalt deflected the attack. He then swung his axe from the left to the right, knocking the swordsman's glorious heraldic shield away and likely breaking the man's left arm. The swordsman wouldn't be in agony for long, though. Nalt took advantage of his opponent's staggered pose and deliver a clean hit through his light helmet, sending bone, blood, and brain splattering out in each direction.

Then he heard clicks. Heavy clicks. Right to his north, it was exactly what he feared in his heart: Crossbowmen. A squad of ten or so lined up in front of the harbor master's building to loose a volley into Nalt, Grenna, Mastohlt and the others. They were too far away to strike before they would loose their arrows. Even plate wouldn't stop those bolts. And they were too close to miss. Forynda, save us, he suddenly found himself praying in those fractions of a second. Please.

A wellspring of the Ceunan Aura flowed through him. He didn't even know exactly what he wanted to do with it. He imagined himself bursting in a blinding orb of light. It's what it felt like the Aura was doing within him. Such power wanted to escape through every channel it could.

"RAWGH!" he screamed, holding his war axe high above his head. An incredibly bright glow suddenly surrounded him, causing friend and foe alike to gasp or scream in shock. The archers in front of him were chief among them. He heard them trying to regain their bearings in the face of his terrifying display and wasted no time in lunging forward at them.

Unable to see through the blinding glow himself, he swung wildly. Horrible sounds of ripping flesh, shattering bone, and the pained screams of the dying filled the air. His rage flowed so intensely that he could scarcely even feel his axe making contact with their bodies. It effortlessly cut through them.

"Retreat! Get away from that!" an order sounded out from the Methrangian lines. "Retreat!"

As the light around him receded, he saw the pile of eight mangled bodies, all of them those crossbowmen he had feared so desperately just seconds before. Now they were just bloody smears upon the ground. Grenna ran up to him while the Nitandran soldiers surged into the city through the gaps he helped make in the line.

"Nalt, what the fuck was that?!" she shouted, laughing in a sort of confused mania as she wiped blood off her sword. "I'm glad, since they were going to kill us, but what the...?"

"I say, Nalt!" Mastohlt gasped as he approached. "That was certainly new."

Bafan, Wella, and Ovigon came up not long after, each as confused as they could be.

"That's a thing you can do?" Bafan asked, putting his bow down for a moment.

"I guess it is now," Nalt, almost choking from a measure of embarrassment, answered.

"I don't think you'd mind if you lead the way for the rest of our mission here?" Ovigon joked.

With the sounds of battle becoming rapidly more distant, that moment wouldn't come immediately. As Nalt and the others learned within a few minutes, Gadisian forces had landed west of the city and circled around to the north just as the Nitandran forces landed either right in the city or immediately outside its walls. Realizing that they were about to be surrounded, the Methrangian forces retreated headlong to the north to try to beat the vice closing on them. Not all of the defenders made it, but most of the Methrangian army escaped to fight another day.

When Sepaxo landed in Sicahn he addressed numerous units for specific acts of heroism and impressive combat skill. When he came to Grenna, Nalt, and the others, he paused with his arms grasping one another behind his back.

"Which one of you was that radiant berserker I saw from my ship?" the Admiral King inquired, his voice in a guarded tone.

After a nudge from Grenna, Nalt stepped forward and bowed to Sepaxo.

"That'd be me, Your Highness," he muttered, realizing he probably didn't have the style of address right, but hopefully it would be close enough.

Sepaxo curiously eyed Nalt and said nothing for a few seconds.

"Your unusual skill in battle helped shorten the fight and saved the lives of my men. You have my gratitude," the Admiral King declared before starting to walk off with his stiff formal gait. "I will be sure to reward you and your comrades appropriately."

Sepaxo was then greeted by cheers from thousands of Nitandran soldiers who raised their spears high while shouting his name. Nalt's comrades, however, continued to mass around him.

"Are there any other tricks you have up your sleeves, Nalt?" Bafan inquired, one of his sandy eyebrows raised high.

"I don't really know for certain," Nalt conceded, but he then saw the glowing eyes of Forynda again as he blinked. "But I believe that I do."