Crewe’s attack had savaged most of the jinn frontline, but this didn’t seem like much in the face of such a massive army. The jinn quickly filled in the gaps, conjuring wall after wall of anti-magic sand in an attempt to stifle the lieutenant general’s spell.

It was working, in the sense that they were slowly grinding down the advance of Crewe’s devouring cloud of horror, but they still lost several hundred more souls to it before it finally dissipated.

While that was happening, the four jinn leaders continued to bombard the city nonstop with their own spells. The most devastating was, ironically, the ‘living storm’ jinn. His attacks somehow managed to travel straight past the spatial obfuscation every single time, slamming into the barrier’s body with peals of thunder and crackles of electricity.

Likewise, Crewe’s cloud of horror dissipated to reveal the knight-like jinn were still very much alive. In fact, they were slowly yet steadily pushing forward, millimeter by millimeter, destabilizing the barrier all the while.

Sparks of spatial magical began to fire off. They crackled through the air, leaving behind black contours where space was simply sheared away. **Then the section of the barrier closest to the knight-like jinn convulsed, spitting out a spray of sand and jinn-made constructs like a massive beast that was forced to throw up its prey.

That was when I knew trouble was coming.

Crewe must have agreed with my assessment, because his face grew even stormier. “Prepare!” The order rippled through the air, unerringly reaching the ears of each and every one of his soldiers. “Meet the enemies!”

With his bellow, the barrier shook one final time. Then it shrank, pulled violently behind the line of assembled demons in a spray of sand and constructs. I felt ill when the barrier passed over me. That strange sense of being stretched across an ungodly distance yet still remaining whole permeated my consciousness for a brief, painful instant.

Seconds later, the spatial construct snapped in place, much closer to the city this time. In fact, it barely covered the city’s periphery. The moat was well outside of its protective embrace.

So was the demonic army.

The jinn seemed to take that as a signal. Their entire force surged towards us instantly, the anti-magic knights included.

“Steady, now.”

Glaustro’s voice echoed in my mind, and I glanced over at him. He stood not even ten feet away from me, still conjuring spells with incredible power and astounding speed.

‘Second-rate mage’, my newly blue ass, I thought.

I tried to poke the mental connection for a way to talk back, like he had enabled once in the past, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to listen to me right that second. He was too busy giving instructions.

“I will take care of the constructs that come near. Bronwynn, focus on keeping the kids safe. I don’t want some random jinn pulverizing them out of hand. They’re still not as tough as a demon. You two, focus on sneaking in strikes on any distracted jinn. I know you have that movement technique down, so use it. I’ll try to keep the area relatively free of sand. Hayden, you in particular need to pay attention to stronger combatants and take them out when they falter. They won’t expect your sword.”

I knew he wasn’t looking in my direction, but I nodded anyway. It was a solid plan. But as the first grains of sand showered down on us and made some of the demons flinch, I began to wonder how, or even if, we could execute it.

For the moment, we just held our ground, watching the jinn approach. Spells cast in a hurry notwithstanding, we had no easy way to reach the enemy, and the demons still seemed to be avoiding the moat. That moat was now the only thing that stood between us and the jinn army. From my perspective, it looked like a laughably pathetic obstacle.

Then the jinn tried to cross the ‘pathetic’ moat, and I got my first glimpse at what kind of traps demons could cook up while holding an area over time.

The first attempt I witnessed came from an earth jinn. He tried to launch himself over the moat in a burst of strength, but the second he was a few feet away from the banks, gravity seemed to increase in power countless times over. He barely managed to squeak out a scream before he was dragged under, the water swallowing him without a ripple. I couldn’t even see his shadow in what appeared to be a relatively shallow channel.

Almost the same moment, an ice jinn jumped down into the moat. Ice exploded around her in an attempt to freeze the surface, but her eyes widened when she failed to conjure more than a couple snowflakes. She vanished under the water with as much success as her rocky ally.

The third jinn, a bundle of water with a roughly humanoid shape, plopped down into the moat and just… melted. He dissolved away like a raindrop in the ocean, with no fuss or even a sound.

Those were the three jinn I had my eyes on, but all along the moat’s edge, panic erupted as many other enemies threw themselves to their deaths.

I couldn’t hold back the laughter that slipped out of me. The demons around me took it up immediately. The jinn glared at us, but for a few moments, it seemed like they had no answer to the watery trap.

The only factor that played against the demonic army consistently was the ever-increasing intensity of the sand. It made casting far more difficult, and some of our less skilled mages were already failing to maintain their dome-like casting matrix.

Glaustro had also stopped churning out spells, but only because he now held an odd medallion. I guessed it was made of the anti-magic crystal the jinn and local wildlife were so fond of. The sergeant was channeling unreasonable amounts of mana into the medallion, weaving all sorts of runes around it at the same time. Some were torn apart by the sand, but overall, Glaustro’s magic was remarkably resilient.

I looked back at the moat just in time to see the jinn finally find their answer to our second layer of defense.

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One of their massive worm constructs slithered up to the moat’s edge, rose high up into the air until it was practically balancing on the tip of its tail, and then collapsed forward. The strengthened gravity did take hold of it, but this simply helped slam the construct even harder down on the other side of the moat, forcing demons to scramble out of the way lest they get squished.

With that success, more and more of the constructs started to copy their fellow’s tactic, and the jinn began their crossing.

The strengthened gravity still affected these jinn, but their inhuman physique and an actual road to walk on allowed them to push through and reach our soldiers. Thankfully, the plate-armored jinn were much heavier and somewhat clumsy in comparison to a normal jinn, so they couldn’t join the battle immediately.

Nonetheless, the regular troops immediately showcased why jinn were dangerous, even if their civilization didn’t quite match up to the Abyss. From solid constructs to wide-ranged spells, they brought to bear every possible variety of elemental magic against our troops, who were already bogged down in sand.

Bronwynn surged forward, batting all enemies away from the concentrating Glaustro. Mia and I rushed to assist, but it was nothing like the rushes I had recently been able to enjoy.

It was a lesson in humility I wouldn’t forget any time soon.

I’d gotten so used to being either massively weaker or massively stronger than my foes. The insects, the lesser constructs, the mortals of Lagyel? I could overpower most of them, and my sword was deadly against anything with a soul. Stronger threats, like a golem, were beyond me, but I could just wait for someone to make an opening and then stab away.

So it was only now, stuck in the proverbial trenches as I was, that I figured out a massive weakness of mine.

I lacked skill, and training, and overall polish.

Compared to most mortals, I was decently skilled with the swordsmanship I had stolen. But against jinn? Immortals who had spent thousands of years, if not longer, learning how to fight?

Furthermore, the jinn were just as fast and strong as I was. Faster and stronger, in fact, forcing me to push to its limit the mana technique Mia had taught me what felt like ages ago. It was a flickering, weak mess, thanks to the sand. But in the first minute of ‘fighting’ the jinn, that technique saved my life at least ten times.

It was the short-distance teleport that did the trick. The jinn were so skilled with their weapons that I could barely keep up with their strikes. Over and over, I just managed to shove aside a few attacks before I was forced to teleport elsewhere. This took me away from my previous opponent’s reach, yet always placed me directly in the sights of another jinn.

Still, Mia and I kept trying to help Bronwynn. Five jinn were attacking the demon, but he fought like a man possessed, sword flashing as he kept them all away from Glaustro. We joined in as much as we could, using our movement technique to harass and distract the enemy.

It didn’t take long for one of these jinn to zero in on me and Mia. It was a lithe, ashen-skinned, fire- and earth-user. When I actually managed to blink forward and nick his arm, opening him up to a strike from Bronwynn he only barely dodged, he turned to the two mortals in the demon ranks with murder in his eyes.

I dodged and parried frantically as he peeled off from his duel with Bronwynn, spikes of earth and flashes of fire joining the myriad of attacks against me and Mia. The only reason we were surviving at all was that we could work together to bluff the jinn out.

His overconfidence probably helped us, too, He just didn’t seem that worried about two lowly mortals with lowly, mortal, ‘normal’ weapons, even if one of those weapons had managed to sneak past his defenses and scratch his arm.

Unfortunately for him, my sword wasn’t exactly ‘normal’ anymore.

The emerald haze of fire flickered around my blade with each strike. Even if the sword failed to cut him, he flinched every time the spectral flames reached his skin.

At the same time, the original wound that had earned us his ire was festering. He began wincing with each movement, favoring his left arm as the wounded arm gradually lost its strength. We still couldn’t hope to defeat him, but we could hold out long enough.

Then Glaustro proved, once and for all, why he really should stop being so harsh on himself when it came to his accomplishments as a mage.

With one final rune and a shouted chant, a blast of power erupted from the demon. The amulet he had been holding lifted from his hands. Affixing itself in the air, the medallion sent out a pulse of light, banishing the anti-magic sand from our entire section of the battlefield.

All around us, jinn flinched and faltered, and demons got a second wind as their environmental weakness was stripped away.

Mia and I immediately sprang into action.

Two specters pounced on the disoriented jinn in front of us, and he swiped through them ineffectually as we reformed on either side of him. I drove my sword right past the little armor he wore, stabbing it deep inside his chest, while Mia spun and stabbed both her claws and her sword into the jinn’s throat.

He made a sad little rasp of pain as he slumped on top of my blade, but Mia’s attacks only drew a small spray of blood. They failed to penetrate much further than the jinn’s skin. The cat woman hissed angrily, lashing out with a kick of pure frustration at our victim.

However, as we relished our brief moment of victory, the situation above our heads was still unfolding.

Crewe clashed repeatedly against his four opponents, and failed repeatedly to deal anything resembling a decisive blow. The four jinn had accrued a collection of minor wounds, but Crewe’s size in his transformed state meant that entire chunks of flesh were missing from his expanded body. He didn’t look much worse for wear, but he also looked more frustrated than I had ever seen him.

The demon cast some kind of darkness spell that pushed all four of his opponents away. Then he took a breath, one that we all felt shudder throughout the world of Lagyel.

The lieutenant general opened his mouth, and the word that came out of it couldn’t be defined as a word at all. It was more of a primal cry that barely carried meaning, a sensation implanted in every species starting from the dawn of time, a need that gripped every living thing within earshot and refused to let go.

“Terror!”

A blast of something so far beyond regular fear it wasn’t even comparable swept over the battlefield and into the distance.

The effect on our enemies was immediate.

Jinn stiffened and staggered. Some, especially those closer to the lieutenant general, collapsed immediately, completely insensate. The jinn leaders received the heaviest impact. All four of them started to plummet, hurtling through the air to the ground far below.

Unfortunately, the price Crewe paid was almost as dire. Golden chains appeared around him instantly, more numerous than I had ever seen on any one demon. As soon as they appeared, they began glowing forcefully, thickening and constricting. The chains cut past his skin. Puffs of shadow erupted all over his body, only to be burned away swiftly by the radiance of the chains.

Crewe screamed, but it was a sound of frustration more than fear.

The scream tore into us, making every demon instinctively unleash their own savagery on the staggering jinn. Every single member of Crewe’s forces found themselves compelled to inflict as much damage as they could on the four leaders of the jinn army.

I was no different.

Mind clouded by rage, I was barely aware when I kicked off the ground with all my mana-enhanced strength. I rocketed through the air, sword tip already poised, eyes focused on the trajectory of the falling fire jinn leader.

I barely felt it when I left Glaustro’s bubble. Wind tore into me, but I fought to master it. Thankfully, I didn’t need to fight too hard. The jinn was falling, and the gale-force wind ended up shunting me directly towards him. It felt almost like a dream as I swung with all my strength, and my sword cleaved straight through the skeleton of the jinn who was more flame than flesh.

For one blissful second, I registered the pure shock on his dying, fiery face.

Then several spells fired by rage-blinded demons slammed straight into me.