Many demons surround our fortress, breaking through the forest trees. Trees topple as more and more minotaurs take their positions outside our walls. "Why are there so many?" Bones asks at the downbeat of his strum. His question becomes almost lyrical as the note carries it through the air.

"Life itself is the only thing awakened beings in the shadow realm value more than power. Most of the fighting in shadow is done among enlightened beast-infighting or awakened beings hunting enlightened beasts. However, hunting beasts is only allowed if you have a permit from the ruler of the territory. You've signed a death order if you don't have the permit."

"Makes sense why I pulled in the attention of Draxxo during my short visit. I might've been poaching. Is he a ruler?" I never thought about how convenient it was that Draxxo paid me a visit while I was searching for Gene's shade. Because of his visit, I could bind the shade, which became a vassal for Gene. Rip shade.

"You hunted on the Elder Shadow's land without his permission?" Glimmer is genuinely curious. She briefly takes her attention off the army arriving before us and places it on me.

"He didn't seem too upset about it. We had a chat about his old friend Gene."

"Wait… Gene, is Genevieve the Shadow Shaman Queen?"

"Wasn't that obvious?" Unlike Glimmer, Bones' attention never breaks from the invading force. His music takes a slower tempo than I figured he'd play, given our current affairs.

"I guess it was… The Shadow Shaman Queen seemed much bigger in all the stories I heard about her. The way Draxxo and Rottixis obsess over her, she became a legend. The lycan that stole the heart of the shadow lord and robbed him of his lands and lived to tell the tale."

"Gene's still impressive; she's just been a ghost the last hundred years, and it wasn't until Jack, and I saved her and her people that she was able to come alive. She's legendary; it will only take a little while for her to return to her former glory." Bones' defense is solid. The shadow queen has been through the wringer. No one would expect her to be in top-fight condition. Besides that, my impression of Gene is that she was never much of a fighter. Sure, she's powerful, but combat wasn't her focus.

"On top of what Bones said," I find myself adding to the legend of Gene. "The shadow queen now has the powers of a shade on top of her shadow skills. She might be cooler than a dragon."

"You're only saying that right now because Fury isn't here."

"His fault for picking a bad time to disappear."

"No way would he willingly miss a fight. That's not Fury. It took all the promises I could make to keep him here this morning while we were trying to assemble our defenses. If I didn't convince him that my right arm wouldn't function on his body, he'd have taken that as well. Now I'm deep in debt. And I'm a dungeon boss."

"Draxxonicus let you take a shade from his territory?" Glimmer returns our focus to the prior discussion before we can run away on our next topic. Which most likely would've been a lengthy discussion on whether Bones can make his arms work on the dragon.

The demons outside the wall must notice they're no longer the center of our focus. They aren't even a discussion topic, and they seem to become more enraged. The howling, growling, and foot-stomping become more intense. A few occasional nasty roars break through the symphony of noises, which makes me believe there's some powerful, angry demons in the gathering.

Honestly, it kind of seems like the demons are throwing a fit. The lycan children behave better than them, and they are children. Sure, they aren't getting the attention they probably think they deserve, but that doesn't mean they need to act out as much as they are. Makes me wonder what kind of riot we'd see if Bones stopped playing his relaxing tune.

"Yeah, me and Draxxo are sorta friends. It's kinda complicated with the Gene, Draxxo, and shadow demons wanting to hunt Gene's people for gains. He's kind of a bad friend from Gene's perspective, which makes me question my relationship with the elder demon. Can I be friends with enemies of my friends?" I think the demons' outbursts are getting to me, and now I'm actively pulling attention from them. However, my thoughts have gone too far. "Strike that question. Not a good time for discussion. Draxxo, let me take a shade. He even helped me a little bit… I think."

"Interesting." Glimmer no longer looks at me, but I'm sure she just sized me up in her periphery. I like to think she's somewhat impressed.

"So, the awakened shadow beings are hungry for power but don't want to change their lives back in the shadow realm and come here to fight since they can't actually die here?" Fortunately, for the demons now starting to attack our walls, I do have some questions concerning them. There are just so many... monsters. Until recently, their presence on our island seemed insignificant. Now they bombard us.

"What good is power if you aren't alive to use it?" Glimmer answers a bit defensively. I didn't intend to accuse the demons of being afraid of dying. Before I can clear up my misspoken words, the demons begin their assault.

Thousands of minotaurs in a frenzy charge our walls. I've no idea what they intend to do if it isn't running straight into our walls. They've no siege weapons, and how they run on all fours does not allow them to hold any weapons.

To my slight disappointment, the human bulls run straight into our walls. The exterior trees that form the outside of our wall take the brunt of the impact. Calm melodies mix with thunderous collisions and almost align harmoniously in beat. Bark from the trees tears away, creating a soft cloud of dust particles that blend with the harsh cloud of dirt dust kicked up from all the hammering hooves. Despite the fierceness of the charge, the bare trees vibrate with each blow absorbing energy and releasing it before the concussive force drives into the walls. As it is, our footing feels very stable amidst the stampede.

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"I always thought…" Bones pauses his strumming for emphasis. "What is life if not to waste. That could be due entirely to my upbringing as a sacrificial minion, though. Life and your perspective are somewhat skewed when you aren't meant to live."

"What you are seeing now," Glimmer says after considering Bones' philosophy. "Is the culmination of power-hungry demons" — her staff floats in the air vertically as she takes her left hand off of it to apply matching air quotes to the word demons and casually returns to the staff that didn't fall without her support, not even a little bit — "and an obsessive dryad, that can't fathom Draxxonicus could ever love another."

The bulls keep pounding into our wall, which still hasn't budged. We've decided to test our defenses for the time being. The walls are holding on all sides, and our webbing still hasn't broken. To say I'm impressed with our fortification is an understatement. And to think we had no idea what we were doing, to begin with. All it takes is a little bit of stones, runes, and rituals, and any place can become a safe haven.

"So, you're saying that the surge is because a dryad has a bone to pick with Gene, and she's getting the rest of the demons involved in her grudge match?" That seems like a plot full of holes. But love can be crazy like that, I suppose.

"Roxi was unhinged at the best of times. Add a huge influx of power that she gained from this land, a timely inheritance in shadow from a convenient death of her blood sister, and opportunity into the mix, and you get this." Glimmer motions her staff over the massive army knocking at our doorstep. Giving the raging bulls plenty of space to do their thing, the remaining demon force stands by in eager anticipation for our walls to fall.

"Power, love, and revenge... Sounds like the perfect story if you ask me," says Bones. He starts playing a new song that's more upbeat than the last, which isn't saying much since it took active participation from our audience for the music to have any beat. Still, Bones' new tune has him tapping his foot.

"Does that make us the villains in the story?" I ask after a moment of consideration. "Our fight seems noble. I thought we were the shoe in for the protag plot."

"I think, we think —"

"Oh, this is going to be good." I manage to get a sentence in due to Bones' dramatic pause.

"There is a hero in each of us." Bones now has a massive grin. The skeleton always smiles, even more than me, and I often smile. My mouth is tired at the end of each day because of how often I display my set of pearly whites, but Bones' smile now has out staged any smile I've seen before. It's at least a class seven, which would make it as large as a turbulent river. "As well as a villain," he continues. "Each moment is up to each of us to decide which role we are going to choose. Do we play the villain's part or the hero?"

I was planning on letting Bones get away with any nonsense he spouted. Then he changed the tune of his music dramatically to give weight to his words and failed miserably to deliver on the drop. I feel too underwhelmed to let him think he got away with a landslide victory.

"That's a heaping pile of horse rubbish. I can't believe you included us all in that groupthink speech. I feel like rights are violated when you include us and then take a turn for a personal monologue."

"I would like to see you do better. I'm freestyling up here, and our crowd is aggressively disrespectful." Bones counters me with a challenge. It isn't the right time for this, but I don't care. I'll play the part of the villain and accept the challenge.

"Life is too gray to be black and white. What some consider right, some will consider wrong. We need to make the choices we can live with while trying to minimize the darkness… Dammit. I lost it. I thought I had it there for a moment. I could feel the crowd about to applaud my delivery as well. Wait, I think I got it… Nope, it's lost. Damn. I was so close." To add to my defeat, Bones' hands, the set not currently playing the lute, gives me a small mockery clap.

"Are you two done? I think our wall is starting to crack?" The trees lining the outside have all been smashed to bits. The minotaurs are breaking into the stone portion of our wall, and the powerful force from their collective blows has put a hairline crack that is starting to grow. Our defense quality assurance session is about to come to a close.

There are an oppressive number of demons now. Almost as numerous as the wall bullies are the winged harpies which seem much more prone to be on foot than airborne like their normal harpies that also have wings. The naming nuance almost makes me doubt that my perception skills are as accurate as Gene has led me to believe.

Mixed in with the harpies are more dryads, some in human form like Glimmer and Bloom, others covered in trees, and some look no different than the beasts on the edge of rampaging with the bulls.

"Sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong. Most of the time, you are neither. What matters most is that you right your wrongs and make the best choices for you and others." Without stumbling, I spit out my thoughts and feel somewhat victorious in my delivery. I'd clap for myself, but that feels worse than tapping your foot to your own beat. Bones doesn't put out, which leads me to believe I won the duel. Glimmer blinks out of existence momentarily before reappearing as the same version of herself but different.

"Glimmer says she just can't —" The clone uses Glimmer's hand air quotes around the 'just can't' portion of her sentence. "— with you two anymore. "She's just a casual though. Don't be offended by her lightweight resolve. Also, Nette has cut you two from the group chat, so she wants me to inform you that our webbing has been breached. Our fortress is shite; now it is time to fight. The last part is my words. Not hers." All things considered, I like Glimmer's clone.

Not long after the clone's words, our sky cracks, and the webbing shatters into shards that rain like glass. At this moment, the trees pulverized on the outside of our walls come to life and start climbing up our defenses, carrying a bunch of demons with them. This doesn't matter because it isn't long until a large section of our wall melts into the earth.

The bulls surge through the breach, followed by beasts and heavily armored harpies. Behind them are dryads, and next to us are tree monsters. So maybe we should've been more careful after all and not used this opportunity to test our defenses. The counterpoint is that we now know our breaking point, and crappy fortress version two will be much better.

All that stands in our way of a secure tomorrow is the massive force of demons filling the atmosphere with violent mana that intends to destroy. And just like the fly beating its wings through life, the demons walk into our trap.