I didn’t get any sleep that night. The wonders of mana kept me up well past the point when I should have stopped to rest.

Not that I regretted it in the least.

I had wasted so much time when I was first starting out as a mage, trying to get my spellcasting to work the way I wanted it to. The fact that I could now copy what demons were capable of was a heady reward to savor.

Sure, I knew my emotions were driving my behavior once again. But this time, they aligned perfectly with the improvement of my long-term survival chances. Working with spells was both fun and practical.

By the time the first rays of dawn peaked through the window of our shared room, I was confident I could cast the Wind Blade spell on command. In less than a second, too. I didn’t actually test it out, obviously, but the rune formation came off without a hitch every time.

Mia hadn’t stirred the entire night.

The cat lady was still strewn over me in the exact same position when morning came. This would have been murder on my legs and spine if I weren’t cheating with the body strengthening and refinement techniques. As it was, all I had to complain about was some mild tingling where her knee was digging into my leg.

I was just contemplating the idea of waking her up so we could hunt down a meal when the choice was removed from my hands.

A thunderous noise rang out over the city. Startled, Mia jumped so high she almost hit the ceiling. She did hit me on her way down, leaving us both a little dazed as we struggled to figure out what was happening.

Then the same noise rang out again. This time, I caught sight of dust and sand raining down over the city.

“We’re under attack. I think,” I spat out quickly, maneuvering around Mia so I could snatch my sword from its place against the wall. I had just managed to clasp it around my waist when my brand started heating up. A brush against it confirmed my suspicions.

Gather quickly. Enemy invasion in progress.

I cursed on my way out the door, Mia on my heels. As annoyed as I was, though, a part of me felt impressed. This would be the first time I got to see a demonically conquered city come under local assault.

Fighting on Berlis was more a mop-up than an actual war. For all the ingenuity of the local leader, she never managed to launch a reclamation attack.

The jinn, on the other hand, had apparently taken great offense at what the demons were trying to do.

The sound of shattering glass reached me before we made it out of the building. Bursting through the dorm’s main entrance, I looked up to see a shower of sparkling glass shards raining down over the city, accompanied by a wave of sand that seemed intent on drowning everything out.

And right in the center of the sky, where a dome had once denied him entry, hovered a jinn.

He looked like a desert spirit. Sand spiraled around him and wound about his limbs, both protecting him and threatening retribution against any attackers. He wore a loose and somewhat skimpy silken outfit: a pair of puffed-up pants that reached only below his knees, and a large, flowing vest. The vest was unbuttoned, revealing a muscular stomach to the world.

The jinn’s skin was the color of charcoal. Glowing lines crisscrossed his body in a formation that made no sense to me, signs of the magma hidden under the jinn’s exterior. But his most striking features were his hair and beard. Both were ruby red, and they glittered like jewels would under sunlight.

All in all, he was quite the sight.

He was also glaring down at all of us with murderous intent.

To his credit, the jinn did not monologue or make long-winded threats. He merely thrust his hands forward, and an even bigger avalanche of sand erupted overhead, briefly blocking out the sun.

That’s when the enraged scream of a demon ripped through the air.

I couldn’t see the source of the magic at first. All I saw was a streak of lightning that erupted from the city. It bounced ruthlessly between every single grain of sand in an ever-expanding web, reaching the invader seconds later.

The jinn’s scowl turned into a pained grimace as his screams joined the demon’s enraged screeching. The sand sagged and lost most of its strength. For a moment, I thought that would be it.

Then the jinn burst into blue flames. The fire acted as a shield, igniting even the electricity that attempted to reach him. Worse yet, the heat he was radiating melted the sand in one unrelenting cascade. The substance shivered before it fused into mottled glass. This time, the shards coalesced to form wickedly sharp spears, each as large as an adult human.

With another sweeping gesture, the jinn launched the glass-wrought spears down at the city.

I couldn’t keep up with all that was happening. The scope of mana I felt at work was far beyond my ability to process. My newly heightened emotions, which I had kept such a careful lid on, were threatening to swamp me. Panic and despair reigned supreme.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare at the spear hurtling towards me, waiting for it to reap my life.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Mia was just as new to her ascension. Newer, really. Yet, in that moment, she showed that her response to overwhelming odds was quite different from mine.

She yowled and tackled me to the ground, covering my body with her own. Her eyes were wide pools of determination and acceptance. I briefly lost myself in them. It was a better alternative to staring at my approaching death, after all.

Then the entire cavern shook, and the walls themselves came alive.

Tendrils of rock shot through the air so quickly that I could barely track them. They latched onto each of the jinn’s projectiles with uncanny accuracy, enveloping the spears in sheaths of stone. Then the tendrils dragged the spears back into the wall, encasing the glass weapons there.

Even the jinn was left gaping as my angry commander stalked out of his house, eyes glowing with red mana.

I distinctly remembered Glaustro telling me he was never gifted as a mage, not in comparison to his brother. In that moment, I realized this was pure bias. A powerful mage might not match up to a powerful genius mage, but at the end of the day, power is power.

And Glaustro showed us power.

The sergeant stomped, and the earth shook again. Spires of rock tipped by diamonds shot out of the ground, each and every one aiming unerringly for the jinn.

The jinn tried to dodge. He wasn’t a bad flier, either. He swam through the air quickly and with grace, yet there was simply nowhere to run. Glaustro’s spires blocked out the sun as they pursued their target, and the jinn eventually gave up.

He curled into a ball, his flames burning even hotter in an attempt to protect him. The rock refused to liquefy in the heat. The spires found their mark and stabbed deep into the jinn’s charcoal flesh, drawing screams of anguish and a deluge of blood that resembled crimson gold in its viscosity.

The first demon wasn’t far behind Glaustro, either. I caught sight of a demoness with dusk-colored skin rising above the city on bat-like wings, wreathed in electricity. She laid a hand on one of the spires impaling the jinn, and electricity streamed from her.

According to all reasonable laws of physics, such a move should have reduced the potency of her lightning considerably. Instead, it was like she was delivering her attack directly into the jinn’s body. His screams were reduced to choked whimpers as his entire body spasmed, the electrical force straining and then tearing at his muscles.

In spite of everything, his eyes were wide open and fixed on the city with hateful intensity. His flames erupted one final time, so blue it was sickening to look at them. They blazed hotter than anything I had seen before. They burned even their caster, but he persisted. Once the gathering of power reached a crescendo, the jinn sent the flames plunging down towards the city.

Only then did his eyes go dim. His body slumped, held up solely by the rock spires impaling him. The last dregs of his crimson gold blood dripped down onto the buildings far below.

None of this did a thing to decrease the potency of his final attack.

The fire moved slowly, almost reluctantly. But in its wake, the air wavered, like the heat was devouring enough of it to cause something like a vacuum. The air in the cavern was getting baked out of existence. Though the flames were still high above the city, I was struggling to fill my lungs with enough oxygen for minimal function.

“Methialia!” Glaustro barked.

His answer was a forlorn sigh that seemed to be filled with all the weariness of all the myriad worlds. A demoness stumbled out of the building, still dressed in a nightgown. Her flaming wings kept her upright as she gazed blearily at Glaustro.

“I can’t even sleep now, is that it?” she demanded, then glared up at the approaching fiery death.

With a flap of her wings, she was gone.

She moved with truly unthinkable speed. All I saw was a flicker in my peripheral vision. Snapping my head to the side, I just barely caught the moment when she dove into the flames conjured by the jinn.

The nauseatingly blue flames froze in place for all of a second.

Then they imploded.

Once a decent portion of the conflagration had faded away, I could see the fire getting sucked down into the demoness, like water pouring down a drain. Even the unnatural heat in the air vanished, whisked away by whatever Methialia was doing.

When the flames were gone, the demoness stretched and yawned, not a hair out of place or a piece of clothing singed. Her wings flapped again, and then she was hovering in front of Glaustro.

“All done, boss? Are there more of them, or can I get some sleep now?”

Glaustro sighed in a resigned way that made it clear this was not his first time dealing with the demoness. He shook his head. “No, you can’t. Get your ass into some actual clothes and come down here. This was the only attacker that we know of, but there could be more of them lurking around. We’re on high alert until I say otherwise.”

“Awwws, but I need to make up for my beauty sleep!”

“Methialia, you did nothing but sleep for a week straight before I dragged you out of bed for that meeting a couple days ago,” Glaustro said in a pained voice, then motioned the demoness away. “Just… go, and obey your orders. I’m not letting you get away with going back to bed. Again.”

She grumbled fiercely, but to my surprise, the demoness did as she was told. Even if she was shooting our commander evil eyes the whole way.

That’s when Glaustro fixed his attention on me. His lips quirked up into an odd smile, and I realized Mia and I were still in the same position as before. Namely, she was still on top of me, glaring protectively at everything and everyone.

“Um… Mia? Can you let me up now?” I asked quietly, cheeks flushed. When she ignored me, I wiggled my arm around until I could poke her cheek. “Mia?”

Finally, her eyes focused on me. She blinked like she was seeing me for the first time. “What?”

“Get off me, please? Also, thank you for trying to protect me,” I added, utterly embarrassed by my pitiful reaction to danger. Justified terror or not, I had no business losing control to the point of locking up. Not when there was still something I could have tried.

Mia’s flush was even deeper than mine as she processed my words and scrambled away from me. She opened her mouth a few times as if to speak, but gave up and chose to hover awkwardly instead.

I stood, trying to scrape together a bit of my lost dignity. “Sir, what happened? Are attacks like this common?”

The question made Glaustro scowl as he eyed the city. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, really. Everything was covered in a layer of sand. Glass shards from the protective dome littered the streets. Proper light was only beginning to peak through as Glaustro’s rock spires slowly withdrew. Still, on the whole, the city was remarkably undamaged.

“No,” Glaustro growled. “Attacks like that are not common. At least they didn’t used to be. This city is relatively deep into the territories we’ve claimed, so either the jinn have pressed their assault much further than the last reports suggested, or they’ve found a way to sneak past our blockade. Regardless, this will mean trouble.”

“Could they actually reclaim some of the cities?” I asked cautiously, eyes straying in the direction of the obelisk.

“If it comes to it, even the civilians will fight.” Glaustro motioned towards the city, a smile playing over his lips at the reference to any demon as a civilian. “However, yes. If a powerful enough jinn attacks, they might be able to destroy the anchor. In that case, our people would be considerably weakened. We need to discuss this, and prepare to move out as quickly as possible.”

With those parting words, my commander strode away, leaving me to stew in newfound worries.

This invasion would definitely be nothing like Berlis.