Analia turned in a complete circle on top of her vantage point. Her people had stacked autos up until they reached six layers. It was pretty amazing what a large enough group could do with motivation and coordination. In fact, capitalising on this was something of a speciality of hers.

The defence was ultimately quite simple; time and circumstances allowed for nothing else. The wounded and the children had been moved into the station itself, along with a few caretakers. It made for a tight fit, but then it was only meant to be a temporary measure. Those who could not fight at all for other reasons packed the station’s parking lot, although it wasn’t big enough to accommodate them all and quite a few had to stay outside the protection of its surrounding wall. Analia wasn’t overly worried about that; the enemy would have to pass through a formidable barrier before ever reaching them.

Many of the city’s professional warriors were coming to their senses and remembering who they were. While they were still without their weapons and armour they had quickly been distributed to the front on every side. The regular citizens were divided into rough battalions, each one led by at least a handful of warriors. And at the centre of it all was Analia and her violin.

She’d been playing a simple song of courage, steeling every heart below her for the attack that was coming. They had the numbers to win, if they simply held their ground, and she played a rousing tune to make sure everyone remembered it.

Now, as the shadowy horde appeared on either side of Long Street she switched to another kind of war song. One she had come up with by herself, with a little inspiration from ancient accounts found in the library. The horde came at a run now that it had assembled itself; their master understood that a quick victory was his best bet. The chattering, rumbling horrors made no real use of strategy aside from the coordinated charge, and no weapons besides their claws and teeth. And a few seconds before they hit the assembled lines of citizens, too late to slow down as a group or change tactics, Analia turned her music into solid matter.

In the hands of her warriors appeared glowing weapons, made from pure blessed power. Blue spears were levelled at the incoming horde and impaled the first line of attackers. Her line held against the immediate impact and in several spots her fighters took advantage of the surprise they’d just given their enemy by going on the offensive, stabbing out with spears and hacking with swords at disordered beasts. But there were plenty more monsters behind them, and these bold forays were quickly forced back into line by an onslaught of claws and ferocious hatred.

# # #

Another great leap took Myrina and Jonelik across another street. The rooftop they landed on was two storeys lower than the previous, but their gifts made the landing easy enough and they simply continued their sprint. It seemed a real shame that she couldn’t allow herself to enjoy this: People always complained when she ran across their roofs.

A chattering and grinding of teeth preceded an ugly head before it poked up above the rooftop, and Myrina heard the sound of more sets of claws, bearing more monsters up in an attempt to intercept them. The Deceiver had spread the forces not taking part in the assault beyond the river around the streets of High Town, but neglected to account for the rooftops. They were in a rush to make up for this mistake, and made for easy targets.

Jonelik threw a green blast at that first head, blowing away a chunk of the roof and probably several other beasts. Myrina focused on their other flank and shot a head the moment it showed, then the one that came right after it, and then they took another leap.

They soared across the double-lane road twelve storeys below, caught the edge of the taller roof across, and pulled themselves up. She took one glance back and saw their screaming foes fully ascend to the roof, howling and waving their claws in frustration.

She gave them one lightning blast before losing sight of them.

“Do save your strength,” Jonelik said.

“I have strength to spare.”

The sky was still acting up, playing out its odd thunderstorm overhead like the wrath of a god. But it was god only over a very small area, woven from lies, and they’d made a habit out of toppling those.

They leapt over another gap between buildings, and yet another, before reaching the end of this particular row. Before them was Sentinel Tower, tantalisingly close now, but still separated by a block and a square too large for even them to clear in one bound. Below they could see the beasts gathering from various directions. Some spread out to leave no easy passage across the square, while others ran for the building itself, no doubt meaning to scale it.

Already Myrina heard claws on stone and concrete, coming up the sides of the building, and the gnashing of sharp teeth. And behind them were bare feet, coming down the row of buildings. She glanced around, and felt pretty certain they could reach the Tower via rooftops on the left; it was an easy enough first leap, too. But the right looked viable as well, although that leap was more daunting.

“Right or left?” she asked, and let the lightning come to the surface of her palm. Jonelik stood completely still, seemingly relaxed and lost in thought. “Right or left?!” she repeated more urgently as the feet and claws and gnashing teeth closed in.

“Right,” he replied. “Victory lies to the right, narrow and deadly and past the serpent.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

His sight was always at the very least a touch difficult to deal with and never a full guarantee, as the man himself would reiterate at every opportunity. But she nevertheless ran to the left to gain a better running start, then she launched into it.

They were coming from every direction save above, and for an instant it seemed that they’d delayed just a second too long. But Myrina made it to the edge without being grabbed or slashed at, and leapt with all of the power that had been granted to her. She soared like a bird, the tails of her coat flapping behind her. She realised that she wouldn’t quite make it just in time to brace for slamming into the wall. Then she slammed into the wall.

Her fingers fumbled for any purchase, and her left hand caught on a windowsill. She swung like a pendulum for a moment before getting a grip with her right hand, and then launched herself up. Jonelik scrambled up a moment later and they continued on without wasting words. That is, until they cleared the first street in this new row and Myrina glanced to the right. The Great Serpent was coming.

“Oh, piss in the Abyss!” she shouted.

“Keep going!”

“Oh, I’ll keep going!”

The monstrosity coiled its way around a relatively thin building like a snake would around a tree, and the head stood well above the rooftop they were currently sprinting across. She could see it tense for a strike, and it was only as it lunged that she realised they weren’t the target. The head passed close by, but targeted something down on the street and out of her sight. The whoosh of air it caused knocked them both off-balance, breaking their stride for a moment.

From somewhere down below came the faint but distinctive sound of one of Petyko’s power-laden sword strikes. The Great Serpent roared and reared and the head came back into view. It careened backwards uncontrollably as it lost its grip on that other building, and Myrina saw the head coming their way. She bounded to the left and the Serpent landed heavily on a roof not built for anything close to this kind of weight.

The concrete gave in with an almighty noise and Myrina bounded again just as the patch she was standing on gave in to gravity. She stopped at the very edge of the roof, and everything on her right crumbled apart to join the Serpent on the building’s top floor. Jonelik was in front, having landed slightly ahead of her, and they both continued to run. It was rather like tightrope-walking with a very thick rope.

Narrow and deadly and past the serpent. Right.

A slitted, shield-sized eye fixed on her, and Myrina readied a lightning shot she knew would be next to useless. Then another crackling slash sounded down below and the beast rumbled in mingled pain and fury as it lost all interest in her. The entire building shook as it reared back up and dove out of sight, continuing its hunt for Petyko. It simply continued shaking and making an unnerving rumbling noise as the two of them finally leapt off it and onto the next roof.

Their foes had finally gotten wise, or perhaps just lucky, as now the shadow-beasts were actually waiting for them. Nine of them stood on the far side of the roof, between Myrina and Jonelik and the final stretch to the Tower.

“Rose manoeuvre,” Jonelik said as the nine of them charged, and Myrina had no objections.

He held his rod out and fired one of his shots. As always it travelled relatively slowly, but hit the centre of the group with a small but potent blast. It annihilated three of them immediately while the others scattered. Myrina shot one before it could regain its footing, and another. Jonelik fired another blast, and now that they were on their toes and ready to dodge he deliberately aimed wide, spooking them into darting in the other direction. It gained Myrina another convenient free shot, and she flash-fried her third foe.

The last three finally closed the distance in a desperate rush, with shrill battle cries issuing from their toothy maws. Myrina let off one last blast, but while there was no dodging lightning, a bit of luck could let one dodge the movement of her arm at just the right movement. Her shot missed, and she was left vulnerable and open as two of the beasts rushed her. She managed to get an arm up and claws glanced off the tough fibres of her sleeve, though the impact still hurt. The other one tried to wrap its paws around her in a grab, but she wove underneath the swipe and took one step to close the distance granted by the thing’s overlong arms. She sent lightning up her arm again and packed it into the punch she delivered to her enemy’s face. The burst of lightning tore the head apart with a boom. Myrina was reminded why she rarely did this as her vision went utterly white and she could only guess while dodging another attack by the other one. Of course, the beast could only guess as well, and she got away with a mere glancing hit to the shoulder.

A familiar whoosh and a flash of searing heat against her skin marked the death of the eighth enemy, and her vision returned just enough to see Jonelik slam into the final one from behind. She didn’t dare shoot lightning into a melee, any more than he dared resort to his rod, and so she went in with a high kick. It knocked the beast further backwards before it could recover or turn to face either of them, and Jonelik slammed into it with an all-or-nothing double-handed shove. It flew further this time, and now she unleashed the lightning.

That left all of them done for.

“No time to waste,” he said and immediately ran for the roof’s edge, towards Sentinel Tower. “None at all.”

The sky still rumbled and tore open for a moment at a time, and though getting more distant the Great Serpent was still destroying everything in its path. And audible very faintly through all of that was the battle of Long Street.

No time indeed.

She followed him off the roof’s edge, and touched her foot on a windowsill on the way down, then a flag pole and finally a street light before her power allowed for a gentle touchdown on the street.

Sentinel Tower was an imposing titan, seeming to scrape the sky itself, and under the present circumstances perhaps that was a fair assessment. The Deceiver’s minions all rushed towards them and they both sprinted towards the tower itself. They each wordlessly claimed 180 degrees of the environment as their own and fired their respective shots at anything that looked like it might manage to intercept them. The crack of thunder and hiss of heat cleared their way on that final run; this sprint to save the great city in a moment that Myrina knew would go down in legend for either heroic success or catastrophic failure. She could allow herself no mistake, no moment of carelessness, no weakness or fear or the slightest stumble. She had to be a weapon, the champion she had been trusted with being, and nothing else until the Deceiver lay defeated.

Finally they reached the base of Sentinel Tower, a point from which it almost seemed to make up the entirety of the world. Up above awaited the steps that made up its shape, getting narrower with every fifth storey, like a pyramid that someone had stretched up like wet dough.

They both leapt, drawing on the strength given by the Powers High, and landed on the first step.