They were, Mirian knew, fucked. Even if they did want to rely on ‘we’re innocent, don’t shoot us,’ which the Akanans clearly didn’t give a bog lion’s ass about, they’d just become a major target.

“Tell them to retreat somewhere else!” someone shouted.

I’m going to die again, Mirian realized. Nicolus must have known. Who else had known? And how had they found out? It hadn’t been through her, because Nicolus had done the same thing the first time. He’d left the exact same day.

On one hand, he was a piece of shit. On the other hand, she sort of got it. She’d tried to save everyone. What had that gotten her?

Mirian stood. “Let’s clear the hill!” she shouted. “Who’s with me?”

She did not get the rancorous cheer she was hoping for. But she did get a few people.

Someone she didn’t recognize tried to stop her. “Don’t get yourself killed. We’re safer sticking together here,” he said.

“They will absolutely kill us all,” she told him. “But you do what you want.”

“I’m not going to let more people get killed,” he said, and held out his hand.

Mirian drew her spellrod. Her voice turned cold and she fixed him with a penetrating stare. “Get out of my way,” she said flatly.

The man backed away.

“Let’s go,” she said. Mirian noticed only Lily and Xipuatl were following her. “Selesia! Come on. We still have a chance.”

“I can’t,” she complained.

“You can.”

Mirian went and knelt in front of her. “Selesia, the first time this happened, we didn’t meet. This time, I fixed that. Don’t give up yet. I still owe you… I owe you a date. Duels lesson and dinner, yeah?”

There, she’d said it.

That just made Selesia burst into tears, and Mirian felt this wretched feeling. She couldn’t stand it. She took Selesia’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go. Together.”

Selesia wiped her face, and nodded.

The gunfire was getting closer. Flashes of light now flickered on the underside of the low-lying clouds. As they began to summit the hill, those flashes illuminated the tops of the trees. North of them, they could see fires burning and lighting spells dancing.

About a dozen of them had decided to keep going. Maybe more would have joined, but by now there was a big press on the road as the crowds had piled up. People south on the road were just shouting at each other, but north, she could hear the raised voices of panic setting in.

Mirian didn’t recognize most of the people with them. Everyone was wearing their cloaks because of the night chill, and the light spells weren’t doing much to properly reveal faces. It was hard enough keeping track of her people. Surprisingly, Valen had made her way to the front.

“Valen!” she said. She was still a jerk, but she was a familiar jerk. “Guess hell didn’t want you?”

“Yeah. Gods-touched, huh?” she said, and spun her finger around her ear.

A few other students had joined them, as well as townsfolk. Three people had farming implements they were holding like polearms. One of them had a sword, though even in the glyph lights it looked about equal parts rust and steel.

The ice on the hill was treacherous. “Here,” Valen said, and cast a spell that created tiny force spikes on the bottom of their boots. That helped with traction a bit.

“Up ahead,” Lily said. It was her light spell leading the way. Sure enough, there was a loud clicking and chittering noise up ahead. Mirian could just make out the dark forms of the frost scarabites. Gods, they were huge!

Xipuatl said, “They don’t have these down south. What are they weak to?”

Valen said, “Blunt force. You’d think it’s fire, but no, they just ignore the stuff, or if it’s annoying them, they breathe ice on your fire spell and fizzle it. Target their tiny faces. You can also use blades to cut off the antennae. And poke out their eyes.”

“Well someone was paying attention in Viridian’s classes,” Mirian muttered. Louder, she said, “I have a cutting blade spell. I’ll try to hit them with it. And a force shield spell, to protect us from the frost breath.” She clicked the button on her spellrod to put it into combat mode.

Xipuatl said, “I can get the vines to attack those scarabites near the banebriar.”

“Which class did you learn that in?” Valen asked.

“I didn’t,” Xipuatl said. “Alright, aim for the faces, and watch the pincers. Let’s go!”

Mirian aimed her force blade spell at the face of a nearby scarabite and sent the glowing blades slicing toward it. With frightening speed, it skittered toward her, now missing an antenna, but clearly pissed off. She immediately put up a force shield, and just in time. A gust of dark air tinged with blue smashed into her force shield, growing ice crystals along it. Mirian waited for the attack to subside, then switched again and sent the blades again, this time from a much closer range, pouring more mana into it. This time, the blades severed one of the pincers, while another lacerated it all along the front. The giant beetle let out a hissing screech that was, frankly, terrifying, but it ran off, dripping whatever fluid it had instead of blood. If Professor Viridian wanted the technical name for it, he could come up here himself and tell her.

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She turned her attention to another of the nearby scarabites. Lily had hit one with a hell of a force spell, which had sent it skittering back, but angrily clicking its crystal wings together while keeping its pincers opened wide. She sent the force blades at it a few times. When it charged, she threw up another force shield, but the beetle just rammed into it, sending Mirian reeling as the spell collapsed on her. She was saved by Lily picking up a chair-sized rock and hurling it directly into the creature as it charged. It stopped in its tracks, clicked its wings one more time, then fell over and stopped moving.

When she looked over to the thick vines of the banebriar, she saw that Xipuatl hadn’t been exaggerating. The two scarabites that had been feeding on the people entangled in the vines were now engulfed themselves, struggling mightily, but to no avail.

There was movement to her left. Mirian had trained so long in dueling that she reacted before she thought, like her scepter was a rapier. She pointed it and channeled again. The force shield came up just in time, blunting the swipe of the sharp pincers of another scarabite. She found herself tumbling back, and she landed hard on the rocks and ice, her bag sliding behind her. The shield broke as her concentration did, and the scarabite ran forward. Apparently, its eyes or antennae had missed where she’d gone, because it rushed over her, but one of the legs had her cloak pinned down. She raised the spellrod once again and clicked the upper ring once, then poured as much mana as she could into it.

The force blades sawed into the underbelly of the thing. One of the pincers came down toward her head, close enough she felt it brush her scalp. She moved to the side as best she could and kept channeling, sending the blades up like a fountain. Viscous beetle-goo poured down on her, while bits of shredded carapace rained on her like little icicles. Then it collapsed, pinning her firmly to the frozen ground.

“Hey, little help!” she called out. Her arms were now firmly trapped, and though the full weight of it wasn’t on her, enough was.

It was Lily who came to the rescue with an enhanced lift object spell. With the frost scarabite’s soul rapidly deteriorating, she was able to heft the corpse up just enough for Mirian to scramble out from under it, though she had to quickly unclasp her cloak and leave it beneath the myrvite; it was too sturdy a weave to simply just tear free.

She stood and assessed the situation. The frost scarabites were either dead, trapped in the banebriar, or scurrying off, their fear of danger outweighing the carrion prize. Several people were screaming in agony, though the now constant roar of gunfire and explosive spells nearby kept drowning it out. One of the townsmen was dead, having been bisected by pincers. Mirian turned away from it as soon as she realized what she was looking at.

Then she realized Selesia was one of the injured. She was lying on the ground, clutching her side. Mirian rushed over to her and knelt down. “I need a light spell!” she called. Her light spell was in her spellbook, which was in her satchel, which had gotten lost on the ground somewhere. Someone obliged.

Selesia was breathing rapidly, and blood was leaking from between her fingers. “Get a priest!” Mirian called, though she knew there was little hope of that. She could hear the screams down below where the population of Torrviol was corralled into a tiny section of the road, trapped between the thick forest and the river. With the thunder of the artillery landing nearby, even her shout might have gone unheard. She ran back to her cloak and cast her force blades spell again, then took one of the shredded pieces to wrap around Selesia’s wound. Then she flicked the button on her spellrod and adjusted the dials so that it was on the manipulate object to tighten the fabric so that it created a better seal over the wound. “You’re going to be okay,” she said to Selesia, and tried to smile.

The girl was pale. She’d lost a lot of blood, and not just externally. The pincers had sliced open something important.

“Mirian. Mirian!” Valen was calling her.

“We need a priest,” she repeated.

“No. We have to go. That Tlaxhuaco guy is opening a passage in the banebriar. Some real druid shit, I’ll tell you what, but it’s working. But we have to go now.”

“Fuck you, I’m not leaving her,” Mirian said, though even as she said it, she knew it was a stupid thing to say. She could hear the screaming below. A panicked mob was coming up the hill, and it didn’t just contain townsfolk, either. She saw Baracuel soldiers running too. It was a rout. A total disaster. But how had the Akanans broken through the force so fast? She’d read that book on battles, and it constantly was talking about how artillery and good cover could bog down even a clearly superior foe for hours if not days.

“Mirian,” Valen said, and her voice was different this time. Sorrowful. Then she said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter.” And she looked up.

Mirian had been so focused on Selesia and the commotion at the bottom of the hill that she hadn’t even seen it. Once she did, it was impossible to miss.

A pair of colossal airships floated in the sky above, drifting southward towards them. They resembled one of the great warships she’d seen in Alkazari’s harbor as a child, except twice the size and far more angular. The huge wooden hulls were studded with steel, brass plating, and hundreds of glyphs along sections of it. Six thin beam-like rods extended from the sides like wings, magic sails stretched between them like a cross between a storm and a spiderweb. Protruding from ports in the hull were dozens of guns, angled down towards the ground.

Towards them.

Mirian gaped at the sight. She’d seen airships before. They had been fifteen feet long at most. Nothing like these behemoths.

Gods, she thought. Ominian save us. Please. She remembered the statue of Yiaverunan in the Kiroscent Dome. Was that who had saved her? Yiaverunan, give us all another chance. Together. I can’t do this alone.

Great gouts of flame erupted from the guns above, illuminating the night. There was a moment of silence. It lasted a breath, a heartbeat—and then the shells landed. The roar was deafening, and the earth around them shook. Some were earthquake shells that cracked open the hillside; others exploded into dancing lightning that ripped through the trees and through the crowds of refugees from Torrviol. Other shells exploded in brilliant fireballs. Mirrian felt the lancing pain as a pressure wave from a nearby explosion burst her eardrums. The world became silent.

She stayed on her knees, gazing up at the sight, tears running down her cheeks. There was no point running. Despite Xipuatl’s efforts, the way was still blocked. She held on to Selesia’s hand as tight as she could.

In a way, it was beautiful; a light display like she had never seen before. Another volley erupted from the airships, the two of them lashing out with a synchronicity that reminded Mirian of a show she’d seen as a child with dancers and glyph lights. She tried to focus on that, and not the horror around her. She didn’t want to see Lily die again. Or Valen. Any of them. She was glad she couldn’t hear the screaming any more, but she didn’t dare look down the hill to see what had become of the Torrviol exodus. Didn’t dare gaze anywhere but up at the heavens, least she see where the blood and viscera that she could feel on her face had come from.

She let out a scream—of rage, of sorrow—as the third volley flashed from the cannons in the sky.