I thought travelling in a huge army of demons would be less comfortable than a march with one’s own unit.

I was wrong.

Crewe’s army had actual cooks and other logistics personnel attached to it. The shield his mages put up overhead dimmed some of the sun’s deathly glare. Our pace, while by no means leisurely, was slower than the breakneck rush Glaustro was sometimes forced to whip us into.

Honestly, Crewe was practically wining and dining his army to ensure we would be in the best possible condition for the fight ahead. Add the lack of sandstorms, and the week-long journey through the dunes of Lagyel passed almost pleasantly.

By the time we caught our first sight of the jinn capital, we were quite well rested and in a decently good mood. And since the jinn, for whatever reason, had calmed the sandstorm that typically dominated the capital, I was fully able to appreciate the stunning sight before me.

The ground itself was a scene straight out of an apocalypse. Lava and water mixed and fought angrily for dominance, sending up plumes of mist wherever they met. The terrain was a pockmarked mess of melted sand and actual, boiling lakes that had somehow managed to choke out the sand’s ability to absorb moisture.

The sight overhead, though, was what held everyone’s gaze. Not even the most arrogant demons could hold back small gasps of admiration.

A chain of palaces, each unnaturally large and lofty, hovered far up in the sky.

Some of them were ‘simple’ marvels of engineering and wealth. They hovered on what looked like clouds, some white and fluffy, others darkened by a brewing storm that lashed the surrounding air with arcs of electricity. Domes that featured stunning geometrical patterns glinted in the sunlight, formed entirely out of precious gems.

The other palaces surpassed even that.

One whole palace was built out of nothing but strands of electricity, hovering atop a pool of electrical might. The many jinn who called it home constantly zipped about, using the entire fantastical structure as their passageways. Their movements looked erratic to my eyes. It was as though none of them could hold still longer than two seconds at a time.

Atop a snowy cloud, a coil of ice spiraled around a palace constructed of lava and molten metal. The entirety of the structure swirled and bubbled, sending a veritable waterfall of its various materials streaming down to the ground.

Next was a tree-based palace fused with a watery structure. The water’s streams all pooled around the roots that dangled towards the ground, providing a curtain of water that battled with the lava far below.

On and on the palaces stretched, all connected by crystalline bridges. Together, they formed a massive hovering city which no mortal was meant to set foot in.

A small, defiant part of me sparked at the thought, and I resolved myself to visit at least one of the more mundane palaces before I was shunted back to Lagyel.

“Demons. You are not welcome here.”

The voice thundered down to us, and my eyes immediately snapped up to focus on a particularly impressive specimen of jinn.

He actually made the palaces look like they were made to normal scale as he stepped out of one. Oddly, his body wasn’t the elemental mishmash I was so used to seeing in jinn. He appeared to have actual flesh, even if his skin was unnaturally ruddy. But flames did dance around his form like obedient puppies, shifting from red to white to blue and even a few unusual colors like pink and green.

He also had horns of solid flame jutting out of his forehead, but he didn’t seem willing to acknowledge that tiny bit of camaraderie with the demons massing before his home.

Nor was he done with his speech, apparently.

“We will make you regret invading our world. Your hubris has carried you this far, but no longer.”

As he spoke, more and more jinn emerged from their palaces, dressed for war. Weapons were conjured or drawn, spells were readied, and the vast majority of them underwent the same transformation as the knight-like jinn from my most recent battle. Swirls of sand manifested around them, likely drawn from dimensional storage items like my pouch, and armor began to form, protecting them from nearly all spells we could bring to bear.

“We will cast you before us like the —”

That was when Lieutenant General Crewe made his move.

Truth be told, I’d been a tiny bit frustrated by Crewe’s performance in the previous battles. He had been content to grandstand, feed on the emotional response of his enemies, and delay. Then, when things inevitably went horribly wrong, he threw a hissy fit.

Apparently, our lieutenant general was done with that particular faulty mindset.

One second, his monstrosities were coiling around him while he watched the jinn leader deliver his tirade. The next, he was sailing through the air in his transformed state, scythe growing to massive proportions as he readied a swing.

Clearly, the jinn had not been expecting that, because he visibly recoiled. Then he trust his hands forward. Instantly, a massive shield sprang into view, around the entire city and around each of the individual palaces.

Crewe didn’t care.

With a primal screech that made me want to run for the hills, half the lieutenant general’s hands gripped his scythe, while the other half stretched and elongated in front of him. His claws, already deadly-looking enough, ignited in emerald flames as they began to drip black ichor. These claws easily cleaved straight through the first shield, shooting out lines of glowing force that caused the whole barrier to crumble. Then Crewe’s scythe shot forward.

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The jinn leader must have realized the gravity of the situation about then. His entire body lit up with flames and mana as half a dozen more shields popped up around his palace.

Once more, they were useless.

The lieutenant general’s weapon literally screamed for blood in each of our minds as it began its descent, cutting through one barrier after the other in an inexorable progression towards the jinn leader.

A split second later, and the jinn barely managed to throw himself to the side before the scythe claimed a piece of his left arm and his entire left leg from the hip. The strike carried on, too, as though the slash was carved into space itself. It rent the entire palace apart. Even the cloud base scattered, sending the glorious testament to jinn dominance tumbling down to the ground below.

The sight of his foe’s downfall wasn’t enough to quell Crewe’s rage. His voice visibly rippled into the world as he screamed again, infusing the sound with an incredibly potent wave of mana.

The spell tore straight past the protective barriers without even damaging them, but when it reached the palaces, things changed. Suddenly, the impressive buildings wobbled, enchantments and wards that had held for nearly a thousand years now failing all at once.

I watched in mute disbelief as the entire city listed, then started to plummet out of the sky.

Our commanding officers were apparently expecting this. Communication spells flashed out immediately, telling us to hold until they gave the order to charge.

Personally, I found this somewhat redundant. Depressed and slightly suicidal I might have been, but even I knew better than to charge a whole city as it tumbled out of the sky. That way lay an ignoble squish and an express trip back to the Abyss due to an acute case of stupidity.

Part of me quailed at the sight of the falling city, the part eager to remind me what a monster I was to participate in the destruction of a civilization that had ruled Lagyel for close to a thousand years. Sure, the jinn were conquerors too, but did that really matter in this timescale? Did it matter, when the locals were fully accustomed to the situation, and knew how to survive or even thrive under these conditions?

But I couldn’t afford to hold onto such thoughts. It was a horrible idea anyway to listen to the darkness inside my chest. Instead, I focused on the massive sprays of sand that reached us even where we were standing, well clear of the splash zone, as the jinn capital met its demise.

Glaustro gave us the order not even a second later.

I wanted, so badly, to hurl myself ahead with all the force I could. To rely on my wings and some basic application of wind mana to make myself so much faster than even most demons could manage in a straight line.

Instead, I kept my place in the formation, charging side by side with Mia.

The first wave of enemies we met barely qualified as such. Sure, they wore the special armor, and they had all the right weapons. But they were not ready to handle us.

Probably because they had tumbled out of the sky only moments before.

It was a slaughter, there was no denying it. A slaughter which I was well poised to benefit from, seeing that my blade got past the enemy defenses almost effortlessly in comparison to the strength demons had to expend for the same result.

It was my turn to copy Crewe and scythe through my enemies, though I did make sure to keep my wits about me. While I was having an easy time, I still needed to chart our course forward carefully to encounter all the jinn who were most wounded by the city’s collapse. Their cracked armor and dazed state made them remarkably easy targets for the fierce cat girl fighting by my side, and she never missed when she managed to get to her victims ahead of our enterprising demon comrades.

Throughout the battle, I relished one benefit of my advancement to Archmage above all others.

It wasn’t the ease with which I could call on my mana now, maintaining my defenses and even some offensive spells with laughable ease and at a level I couldn’t even dream of before.

It wasn’t my massively boosted reserves of power, which were also refilling at a prodigiously higher rate.

No, it was the clarity with which I could assess the battlefield around me, plan my next moves, and then execute them with the composure of a true war veteran. There was no more fear or uncertainty driving my actions. My boosted mind and soul worked in perfect concert, allowing me to process the horrors of war with almost contemptuous composure.

So, neither Mia nor I were taken off-guard when figures dropped out of the sky, landing lightly between us and our next would-be victims.

I noted that most of the new arrivals emanated air mana, and that even the few who didn’t had some flavor of magic that would allow them to fly. It made sense, of course. Not all the jinn would be rendered helpless by their city’s sudden tumble. But it did complicate things a smidge. These jinn weren’t just stumbling or moaning on the ground, waiting for us to cut them down.

The closest fighter blitzed in my direction like only someone wielding air mana could, but to my surprise, I could actually keep track of him. My sword even made its way between his blade and my flesh in time to stop the strike, and when I heaved, I was able to send the light and nimble jinn stumbling.

I pressed the assault immediately, weapon flashing in a pattern as befuddling as I could make it, and I was gaining ground. No longer was I helplessly flailing in the face of jinn supremacy, nor was I struggling even to match their blows defensively.

A niggling of pride and a dash of bloodlust invaded my every move as I pressed on. When the jinn was forced to flinch away from Mia’s careless strike as she passed close to us in her own battle, I managed to capitalize on the opening.

I almost paused to watch as life fled the jinn’s collapsing body, arm shorn off at the elbow and a wound cut almost straight through his entire torso. But I had better things to do, and far more souls to reap.

Mia’s foe was dead at her feet. She shot me her own crazed grin, the heat of battle drawing even the cat out of her usually solemn countenance.

Then the world listed.

There was no other way I could describe it. It felt like someone had grasped the entire planet and wrenched it out of orbit. I stumbled and failed to find my footing, because I realized a second later that I’d never lost it to begin it.

It wasn’t the ground that had moved, or my feet that had failed me. It was my mana sense that was screaming, telling me that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

I heard it a second later, laughter so crazed and bitter that a chill ran down my spine.

“Fine, then. If eradication of my people is what you want, have it! Know, however, that I will make sure you at least die once.”

Ahead of me, an explosion of sand covered everything for a few seconds as a titanic golem rose from the ground. I immediately recognized it as one of the superior models, and readied myself for what would likely be my last fight of the invasion.

I didn’t have high hopes that I would make it through.

Then the golem did just about the last thing I expected. Slowly, almost ceremonially, the golem’s right arm shifted into a long, unwieldy spike. The construct lifted it, paused, then brought the weapon down on its own chest.

It stumbled and collapsed onto its knees, but even as it did, a pulse of power ripped through the world, announcing the construct’s death. Another pulse hit right after. Then another. And another. Dozens of golems died all at once, some within the jinn’s capital, and some far off in the distance.

For a moment, we had perfect calm.

Then the world under my feet roared into life.