The broken main gate at the third wall rose up on its clinking chains and Nege saw dozens of men pour out. “We don’t have many cannon,” Eternine explained to the wide-mouthed Red. “We don’t even have any large ones. But for years we’ve made and sold gunpowder to our friends in Glorian kingdoms. The siege has made us overstocked. I’m sure the Teljuks will be happy to take some off our hands.” The emperor’s smile coincided with the first blast of a powder keg.

While the Teljuks in the tower concentrated their fire on the vulnerable men on the walls, dozens of brave soldiers rolled dozens of wooden barrels filled with gunpowder toward the iron and wood tower’s base. Not wearing armor so they could move swiftly, the Truscan men rolled their bombs forward and got close enough for their curses to be heard and for the oxen to grunt in annoyance at this seemingly small obstacle.

Too late did their brothers waiting below warn the gunners on the upper levels. Too late did they shoot and kill half the men insanely approaching the tower. The first Truscan to reach the tower fell against its sides, pierced by a musket ball from a Teljuk who’d hacked a hole through the lower level of the tower. His partner, however, did not stop, and he set his torch to the oil-soaked fuse.

Screaming and cursing and tossing his musket aside, the Teljuk at the ground level hacked away at the metal hide enough to reach his arm through. Ignoring the cuts and burns from the metal digging into his outstretched arm, the soldier reached for the fuse as it burned down just out of his reach.

The blast echoed with the cheers of the Truscans. Another, then another followed it. The tower shuddered and tipped as the oxen, pierced by iron shrapnel from the exploding lower level, stopped. The full division of Teljuks behind the tower saw this occurring, and their commanders whipped them into a charge to save the tower. Not moving, and blocked by those killed from the initial explosions, the hundreds left in the upper levels could only scream in fear as the last kegs were rolled and lit at the same time.

With a roar like a sinking iron ship, the monstrous tower shot off the ground a moment before tilting toward the wall and crashing to the ground, on top of the soldiers charging behind it.

Emperor Eternine’s cries of jubilation weren’t heard all over the city, in the minds of the people praying for salvation, in the hearts of the weakening soldiers fighting to hold their ground against an impossible foe. Though they couldn’t hear it, Nege knew that every man, woman, and child in Eternon felt the joy of their emperor as he held his sword high toward the charging Teljuks.

“Behind the gates! Behind the gates! Mass there and hold!” Eternine shouted.

The gates were still up as the heroic slayers of the tower fled back to the lines. Their monstrosity had fallen, but the Teljuks could see that the already nearly demolished gateway now stood partly open for them to charge through. Over the crushed bodies and fiery remains of the tower, they pushed forward with the cries of their treasure-hungry commanders.

The first ranks couldn’t even form. They’d been spread out when their lines were washed with the blinding dust of the felled tower. Their choice was either death and honor by throwing themselves at the waiting Truscan pikes, or flee and cause further panic in their brothers. They chose the former.

The next wave came as a full regiment of Teljuks, their faces coated with the kicked up dust from the fallen tower, formed and charged with disciplined speed toward the gates. Their morning star banner was not the normal red flag. Its edges were rimmed with golden tassels

“Yenisry! Yenisry!” Eternine shouted when he recognized the banner of Hemend’s elite troops. “Legion! Show them who is the greatest regiment of Triumph!”

Blood and steel and sweat and gore spilled over the formerly grand archway of the third wall’s gate. Eternine and Nege moved along the second wall to look down upon the soldiers as the Teljuks pushed the Truscans back little by little passed the gate. The thin valley between the gateway and the second wall offered enough room for the Truscans, but little more. The fighting was close enough that the men on both the third and second walls could fire down upon their enemy.

Eternine sent for more soldiers, and gave an order to his attendant Nege couldn’t hear as more Truscans joined their emperor on the walls overlooking the fight. Their guns fired down. Their crossbows twanged as their bolts pierced as many as the blasts of iron. But the force and size of the Yenisry regiment made the Truscans step back. More and more morning star banners burst like weeds in the growing ground beyond the gate.

After cheering and ordering his troops in minute movements, the emperor turned back toward the entrance to the second wall, where his attendant was returning, dozens of civilians behind him. They carried armfuls of spears and javelins, ancient Truscan weapons Nege hadn’t seen except in museums. Smiling, Eternine ordered them handed out after he took one and held it high for his soldiers to see.

“Throw down javelins! Shoot them with arrows! Strike them with spears! Remind them that they face the descendants of Trusc!” Eternine roared as he hurled his javelin down on the teeming Teljuks fighting below.

A rain of javelins fell upon the Teljuks. A rain of arrows. A rain of bolts. A rain of bullets. A row of pikes. Yet the Yanisry regiment refused to retreat, refused to give up. They fought and killed and cut down the first regiment as they scaled the walls and once again planted the morning star flag on the third gate.

“Infinity! And Eternine!” Eternine shouted as he led the cheers and the fighting and that hot sun fell, as strong in the minds of his soldiers as Infinity Itself. It frightened the Teljuks, and the death all around them soon became too much to bear.

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Their faith in both Infinity and their emperor won the day for the last legion. Faith, and the sacrifice of many lives as the descendants of Trusc once again held their ground and threw down the morning star flag from their ruined wall.

Nege stormed into Infinity’s Wisdom. The cheering and Infinity-praising Truscans didn’t hear him nor pay attention to him as the Prophet made his way to the back wall where his fellow Prophets stood. The Patriarch was the only one to recognize the Red, and stepped in front of him.

“Nege, Prophet of the Red. All glory be to Infinity! Praise and honor for we have won the day!” the Patriarch said, raising his hands to the black dome above. “Truly our prayers have been answered.” Laughing like he and Nege were old friends, the Patriarch set his hand on the Prophet’s shoulder.

Nege felt more emotional pain than physical when he hit the Patriarch’s forearm with a crack of his wooden staff. “Out of my way, Patriarch. This has nothing to do with Infinity,” Nege said, and stepped around the grimacing holy man.

Sono saw Nege, heard the clacking of his staff striking hard on the marble floor as the Red walked. “I’m quite pleased with you, Nege,” Sono said with a smile, raising her voice over the echoing praises a short distance away. “Few Reds could resist the temptation to intervene at such proximity to so great a battle.”

Before the White could react, Nege leveled the wooden tip of his staff a few centimeters from Sono’s neck. She stepped back, pinned against the majestic mosaic of Eternine the Second on the wall.

“This ends now,” Nege commanded his superior.

Murel didn’t do more than move his gauntleted hand from behind to in front of his body, realizing without a doubt that Nege was not going to hurt Sono.

“Nege,” Sono said, “you will remove that weapon from the vicinity of my—”

“Listen to me. I’m done sitting around doing nothing. The only reason I didn’t dive headfirst into that swarm of Teljuk soldiers was because I knew the Sept would flay me alive. But even the Sept has to admit their decision has caused too much bloodshed,” Nege said.

“This is a siege, Nege. Losses were expected,” Murel said, slowly easing Nege’s staff away from Sono with his golden gauntlet.

Content to slam the end of the staff into the floor with a loud crack of the marble, Nege allowed Sono her breathing room. “I’ve been in sieges before, Murel, but not like this. Hemend brought over one hundred thousand soldiers to this city. Close to eight thousand defend it. What are the numbers now? Half on either side?”

Though Nege knew the White could instantly judge how many bodies stood on either side, she remained silent.

“The Truscans remain with between five and six thousand soldiers, with several hundred wounded,” Murel noted, his tactical interest overcoming the glare Sono gave him. “Your estimation of losses for the Teljuks is slightly less than accurate. But not by much.”

“That is too much blood for any siege,” Nege said.

“It would not have happened if Eternine would simply have taken our offer,” Sono said, her voice condescending and hurried.

“You know he never would have. And you know Hemend wants this city too much to give up. He’s going to attack again. No matter what the outcome, thousands will die.”

“And what is it you would have us do? Fight? You want us to fight for this pathetic empire? They’ve killed countless more than the piles of dead you see at the walls, Nege. Their legacy is of blood and it must take blood to undo.”

“That’s not how I see it.” Nege once again leveled his staff at the White’s neck with a swift motion that blew a gust of wind into Sono’s eyes, forcing her to close them and step back. “I see death. I don’t care about who’s causing it or taking it.”

“Enough,” Murel said, and shoved Nege away with a small blast of golden energy from his gauntleted palm. “Nege, Sono. We’re Prophets. Calm yourselves and speak your minds. Are you suggesting that we end this conflict for the Teljuks or the Truscans, Nege?”

“We will not fight for the Truscans,” Sono said, setting her white headband back in place as she stared at the Red and took a deep breath, regaining her serenity. “We will allow the Teljuks to end that chapter in Triumph’s history.”

“Then why don’t we help them?” Nege asked.

Sono laughed, looked to Murel in shock, and kept laughing as she squinted her eyes at Nege. “What are you talking about? This whole time you’ve been wanting to save Eternon and here you want us to destroy it ourselves?”

“We can’t just look at it as Truscans or Teljuks. We have to examine what’s going on. If we take sides, one side will definitely lose. In this instance, we did nothing, because we knew how lopsided the odds were. Well, we were wrong.”

Reluctantly, Nege added, “I was wrong.”

“The Truscans still stand no tactical chance of victory,” Murel said. “The near sixty thousand remaining Teljuks is more than enough to overwhelm the defenders.”

“I’m not talking about victory. I’m talking about life. If we knew who was going to win why didn’t we make it a certainty, so that fifty thousand men wouldn’t be rotting in the Tolian fields?”

“Then why did you aide Eternine in the earlier skirmishes?”

“Because it wasn’t right to stand idle! Because the man deserved a chance.”

“And now?”

“He still deserves a chance. But I hate seeing so many men die.”

Murel shook his head, sighing as Nege felt empathy, a strange connection, from the Gold. “We can’t have both.”

“The Truscan Empire was the cruelest institution on Triumph, Nege,” Sono said, crossing her arms, “In order to rid the planet of that heritage, it cannot simply fall. It must die. Were we to force it down, then we would not only damage the reputation of Prophets forever on this continent, we would not fully have ended the empire. It must be cut, bled, and killed. That is not something we Prophets like to see. But its long-term consequences are worth the minor losses.”

“Minor losses? Minor loss…” Nege looked around at the people crying in happiness around him. He could easily see them start to cry in terror and pain. “Look around you. Do you want to see these people die?”

“I want to see Triumph succeed. I want to see this cult worship of Infinity forever blocked from history. I want to see Infinity’s purpose that It gave to the Prophets in the form of the three weapons fulfilled. This brutal abuse of religion has caused too much death already.”

Nege ran his hands through his hair, unable to believe how blind to the people’s suffering this woman was. Finally, he sighed and hung his head, knowing what it would take to end this siege. “It doesn’t take thousands to end an empire.” Looking up, he sensed the fear and excitement this stirred in Sono.

“No,” Murel said, stepping between the two. “The Prophets are not assassins.”

“We’ve been before.”

“Not here.” Murel held his golden finger up as a sign of his limited patience with this matter.

“Either one of them dies, or thousands will die.”