Day 03.

A grand total of seventy-seven of Besk’s one hundred and thirty soldiers had survived the blast and subsequent detonations of the cannons. Most by virtue of having not been on the platform, thankfully retrieving more charge and shot from the magazines. Many of those who had been were thrown up and forward of the fort in the initial explosion and suffered very little injuries thanks to the enchanted armor required for them to move the cannons and their heavy shot.

It was a stroke of luck that the forward gun had fired just before the lightning hit them and her gunnery crew had all survived. Fifty-three of Besk’s finest men and women on the two flanking guns hadn't been so lucky. Their shot and charge had detonated inside their barrels, turning the weapons into horribly violent shrapnel bombs that tore through their gunners crews.

The forward gun had survived the damage, though it had been knocked clear of its carriage and lay buried a quarter way up the barrel on the ground in front of the wall. That one was currently being dug out by her crew while others made a makeshift cradle to aim and fire the gun from or fetch more shot and charge.

Besk watched them work even as the fighting, and the fires, drew ever nearer. There weren’t any soldiers down there, it was a suicidal task to send soldiers to fight guardians, but the defending guardians from inside the city was steadily trickling out to meet the assaulting force. A part of him was happy they had someone, anyone, on their side fighting. He didn’t know how this battle would end, but he hoped it would be with Pella’s survival.

The fires were now within a thousand yards and closing. A shower of arrows streaked from the fort's walls to meet the coming Guardians. The enchantments on the arrows, much like cannon shot, took a couple seconds of flight time to arm, but when they did, they streaked across the sky, the light from their mana tracing their trajectory.

Besk pulled his binoculars to his eyes and watched that first volley strike some of the Guardians. Some went down, but the rest quickly raised shields or projected mana barriers in front of them.

“Anyone not personally working on getting that cannon operable, grab a bow and get to firing. We need to keep giving those Guardians a reason to stay back!” Besk shouted.

Bows remained the staple weapon of choice for Ilsylvania’s army. A bow could be fired as fast and as accurately as an archer could draw, moreso if the archer had any sort of aptitude as a mage with archery-oriented spells. Muzzle-loading rifles were clunky, complicated things that were ultimately too slow and wildly inaccurate for practical use against archers or mages.

Besk’s archers rained arrows on the guardians as the cannon, finally freed, fell to the ground with a heavy thump. The gunner's mates quickly cleared the barrel of the dirt that fouled it, rolled it to the cradle, and positioned it.

Sergeant Fask gave Besk a thumbs up. “We’re ready to send more their way!”

“Well, let ‘em have it! Try and hit their backline.”

This far down from the gunner’s platform, Fask had had to aim the cannon at an awkward angle. The cannon rumbled, sending the shot longer than intended, blowing apart a portion of yet unburned forest.

Through his binoculars, Besk watched Guardians, earth, and trees get chewed up and go flying from the shot’s explosive enchantment. Beyond that section of forest, he saw something that made his heart sink.

There were far, far more Guardians approaching Pella than he had ever seen in any one place. High above them, many came by every flying creature imaginable.

Oh hells, we can’t defend against that, Besk thought. But they had to. He couldn’t let his soldiers see the fear he was feeling.

He turned back to Sergeant Fask and with a projection of confidence, said, “Keep your range set and sweep across the horizon, I want as many of those Guardians turned to floating balls of purple as you can manage!”

The gunner's mates quickly lowered the cannon to level, reloaded, and lined up the next shot.

***

Tyree found herself back at the southern gate. She hadn’t officially returned to service and also didn’t have a leadership position within Pella yet, either, leaving her role in the current situation murky at best.

The cannon in front of her hurled its shot and the soldiers around it quickly moved to reset. Mages who could project shields were now set up around the cannon as arrow fire came at them. It was an onslaught that Tyree knew had to be draining their mana quickly.

One of the shields failed, the mana making it up shattering like glass as a volley of arrows punched through, pelting the shielder and one of the gunner’s mates who’d been carrying the firestone charge disk behind her. They both dropped to the ground, dozens of arrows sticking out of their lifeless bodies.

Tyree ran and picked up the disk and passed it off to the charger who threw it down the barrel as three more soldiers in armor slammed the massive projectile down the barrel.

More arrows came at them, but were stopped by a woman in black armor with white lace-like patterns decorating it. She held up a shield with blue mana spanning a wide arc in front of the gunners; causing the return fire of arrows and spells to bounce harmlessly off it.

Another Guardian, the Cait Sidhe Tyree had seen with Halzy earlier, arrived and was helping the gunners position the cannon. She was incredibly strong, letting the multi-ton barrel come to rest on her shoulder as she waited for the gunner’s mates to reload before she placed it down in the cradle.

Besk’s 2nd Artillery proceeded to shell the absolute hells out of the oncoming guardians. With the Cait Sidhe, Singapura, Tyree remembered, they’d been able to vastly speed up their firing rate.

But the fire and Guardians were nearly upon them.

“Last shot, make it count!” Gunner Inais Fask shouted.

The gun thundered, blowing up a group of Sorcerer Guardians who'd been fanning the flames to keep their section of the fire going.

That hadn't really amounted to much as right next to them, the fires continued to race up the hill so close to them, Tyree felt the heat.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Fall back to the city! We're losing the fort! Move! Move!” Besk shouted.

They were losing the city, too, Tyree knew. But she would fight and die defending it, hoping she would join her family on the other side.

Barely a moment before they crossed the courtyard and closed the inner gates, the outer wall suddenly blew apart as a giant rock came crashing through it. Fires poured into the walls as Guardians ran through the hole with wild abandon.

Down in the village, makeshift entrenchments had been hastily constructed, more to slow the advance than really defend against it.

There were more Guardians, those Halzy and his friends and brought here, and they took up their arms and ran to meet this oncoming enemy. Tyree drew her flaming sword and joined them in the fray.

Most of Besk’s company were wielding bows now, unloading on as many of the attacking guardians behind the immediate fighting as quickly as they could grab an arrow.

Fortunately for them, many of the guardians attacking seemed to be of an equal or lower mage rank than Tyree, letting both her and their attacks actually do something as she cleaved through armor and flesh alike with her enchanted flame sword. Though she did have to attack multiple times as many of the wounds she inflicted were near instantaneously healed.

Tyree saw the guardian Halzy fighting three guardians alone. Tyree used the fact that they were ignoring everything else to attack the lowest ranked Guardian long enough for Halzy to land the killing blows on the other two.

“I’m sorry I lashed out at you!” Tyree shouted over the sounds of battle.

“You’ve just been through hell, no need to be sorry!” Halzy shouted back.

“What’s the plan? They can keep coming at us, we can’t defend forever.”

They all knew if the Guardians wanted this village gone, it was only a matter of time. And time was presently on their side.

“We have the level advantage, but not the manpower. More help is coming. We only need to hold until then!” Halzy shouted back. “We’ve got a means to keep them at bay for good, we just need time!”

A guardian with twin swords came at Tyree. She knocked away the first swing before red mana pulsed from Halzy. The attacker's hesitation resulting from the spell he’d cast was enough for Tyree to run her assailant through the neck.

A familiar buzzing sound had Tyree spinning to see Orbnus splitting a woman who'd been sneaking up on her in half with her chain sword. She floated above Tyree, flashing a thumbs up before an errant blast of mana sent her sprawling into the rooftops.

The fighting split Tyree and Halzy apart and the great tsunami of fire washed over the southern walls, leaping to nearby buildings with a ravenous fury. Guardians ran through the flames in a horrifying swarm as they joined in the destruction.

A blow Tyree hadn't been able to dodge took her in the side. She didn't have the near instantaneous healing or inhuman durability Guardians had. The cut spilled her blood and she'd been forced to back up even as her attacker was killed by another Guardian.

Tyree downed more of her healing potion, feeling the wound close and the pain recede. She continued fighting.

She took more wounds, downed more of her healing potion until finally she'd run out of potions. She kept attacking until she'd finally been forced to stop by fatigue.

She’d been delaying the inevitable by downing more stamina potions, but her stock was now exhausted. And so was she. Tyree sipped on her last bottle before throwing it aside.

She hurriedly joined the other still-ambulatory wounded combating the fires spreading up around the village.

Relief washed over Tyree as she saw Lieutenant Besk propped against the side of the well, he’d taken an arrow to the arm and another just above the knee.

His armor was covered in cuts and dried blood, though he’d refused to stay down and was filling buckets of water, replaced by empty buckets as soon as they touched the ground.

“Glad to see you didn’t die!” Besk shouted.

“Same to you,” Tyree replied. She sat down beside Besk.

“You hurt bad? Need a medic?”

“No, more drained than hurt.”

“How’s the city holding? I can’t see shit from here!” Besk set down another filled bucket.

“We just need to hold them off until their help gets here!” Tyree shouted. It was the same thing they'd all been saying all night.

Much of the village was now burning and the ever shrinking circle of defense, but still she could see portals opening up and more defending Guardians leaping through them to join the fighting.

Shielders quickly took positions ahead of makeshift entrenchments set up between the fort and the city while water mages began combatting the fires alongside them.

Tyree was impressed by the level of coordination and quick deployment the Guardians were able to put together. They seemingly knew immediately where best to go when stepping through the portal.

Still she was losing faith.

Tyree heard thunder, but didn’t see any sign that a storm was near and the guns around the fort had long gone silent when they’d been overrun. She went back to filling buckets, hoping if there was a storm coming, it would be big enough to help put out the flames tinting the night time sky with a menacing orange glow.

She heard the multiple thunderclaps again.

No, not thunder, Tyree realized. Roars.

From the north, Tyree saw a sight she thought no man alive would ever see again. A great thunder of dragons filled the sky. The first to arrive, water dragons, flew by low overhead, spraying the burning village with water or snow with their dragon’s breaths that quickly extinguished the flames.

Even more dragons swooped in behind them, grabbing the attacking Guardians within jaws or claws and flying off with the screaming figures.

Armored men and women, dozens, no, hundreds of them, leapt from the backs of the dragons, brandishing weapons as they joined the fighting on the ground.

“Dragons! The dragons are back! The fight is ours!” Someone shouted.

Dragons. The strongest mages known, thought dead for the last hundred years, bolstered the morale of the men and women fighting on the ground. All around Tyree, men and women traded their water buckets for swords, bows, and whatever other arms were within reach.

Someone took up the call of Castera’s army and more joined in. “We are the Fourth Wall! We are the Fourth Wall!”

The dragons preferentially took the strongest of the attacking guardians. Soldiers clashed weapons alongside the defending guardians with renewed vigor as the tide of battle began to swing in their favor. They forced the attacking guardians on the retreat as they reclaimed the precious bits of Pella they'd been forced to give up.

“The library! Those bastards are making a break for it!” Besk shouted. The man was still confined to his seat and was hurriedly pointing towards the village’s emergency shelter.

A group of about twenty attackers had slipped past the chaos and were overwhelming the defending force protecting the library.

Suddenly a large war hammer, trailed by lightning, fell from the sky. It slammed into the ground between the library and the oncoming attackers. The impact sent out an earth-rumbling shockwave that knocked many on both sides off their feet.

Electrified golden chains flew from the base of the hammer in every direction, piercing the bodies of the attacking guardians. A great column of light rose from the hammer, growing wider and wider with each new guardian it pierced. All of them were pulled into the glowing arena by their chains.

A single golden chain shot straight into the sky, connecting to a falling man in black, red, and white armor. He hit the ground and his body began to change.

The man grew larger, his armor and chainmail sliding away, replaced by black scales with ice blue crystal spikes running down his back. A great set of wings sprouted from his shoulders as his helmet pulled away, revealing a great dragon’s head with many, many teeth.

“I am the Sword of Giants, Saiph, and this village is under the protection of North Remembers!” The dragon bellowed, words booming around them like great rolls of thunder.

The man-turned-beast reared up on his hind legs and gave a mighty roar that was answered by all the dragons around him.

Blue fire spewed from the dragon’s mouth. The guardians within the column of light tried to run, but their chains kept them locked inside the column of light. The only thing they could do was pound on the barrier as the dragon’s flames showed no mercy. One by one, the fires bathing the guardians crystallized to stone, encasing them in their moments of panic.