General Feldon looked on as the battle raged. He had ordered all his forces forward, save for his personal guard. Yet even he had advanced, just close enough for his Eagle Familiar to share her vision with him, granting him an aerial view of the siege.

It was brutal.

His forces had breached the walls before they conquered them. The battle in the multitude of baileys between the two walls had been unbelievably costly. While each one had fallen quickly, they had each been a siege unto itself.

Luckily, his soldiers had created multiple breaches, allowing them to surround baileys and attack from multiple angles.

His soldiers had managed to surround a particularly stubborn bailey and was slowly grinding it down into nothing. Many were dying for it, but the General thought it a worthy cost to eliminate this Human who seemed to hold a high rank and respect.

But then Magic began to falter before sizzling out. While his soldiers were still stunned and confused, the Human did not. He immediately ordered for the entirety of the Bailey to escape, carving a route through his soldiers who attempted to stop them with their Magic, only for it not to work.

The clumsy attempts allowed many of the Humans to escape through a small steel door and lock it behind them.

The door was raised up several narrow steps and without Magic, it was incredibly awkward and difficult to break down the door. When his soldiers finally managed to get through, they were met with a wall of pikes in the narrow passageway through the wall.

So narrow that the Devils could barely walk through without their shoulders brushing the sides and so short that the Argalon found it impossible to get through.

He directed the majority of his soldiers in that area to divert to other frontlines, leaving only a small detachment to distract the Humans on the other side.

Instead of ordering his soldiers to conquer the entire network of Baileys, the General ordered his soldiers to break into the city itself. Without Magic, this was difficult, but the physical might of a dozen Argalon armed with pickaxes gradually made a breach large enough for one of them to get through.

Of course, they encountered heavy resistance in the city, but the few that made it through managed to hold off the Humans long enough for more Soldiers to get through until eventually they repelled the Humans almost entirely.

That is, until a massive force of Humans appeared from deep within the city, where their trebuchets struggled to reach. They had charged recklessly across the field of rubble.

When they crashed together, the General cringed, even seeing it through the eyes of his familiar high above the impact itself.

The battle within the city turned to chaos, which without Magic, quickly became brutal and savage.

Feldon knew that even if he managed to get a message to his soldiers within the city, that it would be impossible for it to be executed. At least for now.

Instead, he turned his attention to the battle in the skies. A battle that had quickly turned into a skirmish. Without Ambient Magic to support them, his Fliers struggled to maintain altitude and speed. But it also seemed to affect the horde of Winged Skeletons.

Only a few of either managed to stay airborne enough to continue fighting. Yet he also say no sign of the flying woman.

A shame, because the General had wanted to personally execute her in full view of his soldiers. She had only attacked the ground a few times, but each time had brutally killed hundreds in moments. She was hated.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It would have been a huge morale boost to his Soldiers to see her dead.

Something told him that she was not the type to die without ceremony or a spectacle. If he had not seen her die, he refused to believe she was.

Yet she was not the only enemy that stood out. While the Human in the Baileys had rallied the others to him to fight together efficiently, the flying woman and this brute atop the walls were capable of slaughtering their way to victory.

With the aerial battle coming to a standstill, and the woman missing, General Feldon turned his attention to the battle atop the walls.

What he saw made a shiver run down his spine.

How?

How could someone be so riddled with injuries and full of arrows and still rip apart the Soldiers before him with such ease?

His armor had been so battered it was falling apart. His large sword had broken, yet he still wielded it to cut down the Coalition Soldiers, leaving the broken tip in the chest of an Argalon.

So many had fallen to him, yet he had not moved a step from the bridge.

As injured and exhausted as he obviously was, the brute still had enough strength to throw Devils over the wall and stand defiant.

The General watched the brute and the few remaining Humans around him fight until the brute ordered a retreat. Feldon smiled, knowing that without Ambient Mana, the Humans would be unable to destroy the bridge as they had with all the others.

The smile died when the Brute turned around, with a single swing of his blunt weapon, he cast many Devils over the side of the bridge. At the same time, the Human Archers on the Inner Wall loosed their volley.

The Coalition Soldiers retreated back across the bridge, taking what cover they could and returning their own volleys of arrows. Back and forth they launched arrows at each other, no real progress being made by either side.

The General growled in frustration, knowing the battle for the Walls was as finished as the battle for the skies.

Feldon saw the Brute disappear inside a tower, his Familiar unable to see anything else.

The General disconnected from his Familiar's Vision. Without Ambient Mana to feed the connection, the General had been forced to use the Eagle's internal Mana, and he did not wish to exhaust it. He did not know when he would need it.

Instead, he sat down in the chair brought for him and watched in the shade of the Outer Gate as Soldiers worked to break down the Inner Gate and remove the boulders.

Behind him, three thousand fresh Soldiers waited for the way to clear, allowing them to charge through and lay waste to the Human City that had defied them.

Feldon sneered.

The siege had taken longer than any other during the Invasion, and at much greater a cost, but in doing so, the Humans had consolidated a great amount of their strength all in one spot. A spot that was soon to be destroyed.

He had already received messages from the War Masters, condemning his delay and threatening punishments if he did not take the City soon.

How dare these vermin defy him!

The Argalon working to clear the Gate were making progress.

It would not be long.

* * * * *

The door had been barricaded shut, guarded by any who could stand and hold their weapon.

It was not many.

Without Magic, Lunaria did what she could by torchlight. Her heart tugged at her with each death she felt could have been saved, had she just had access to her Magic.

Even with the doors shut, the battle literally on top of them, and the flow of injured halted, there were still plenty of injured that needed treatment.

Lunaria grit her teeth against the desperation seeping in all present within the Hospital, giving out orders to keep the treatment ongoing as efficiently as she could.

She tied off the stitches that sewed shut an open wound on a man's chest and moved on to a woman who had her ear torn off and a gash on the side of her head.

Lunaria examined the wound thoroughly, checking for any damage she had not initially seen. As with most head injuries, it bled profusely, yet the woman did not seem to have any severe damage.

She grabbed a small knife and held it in the flame of a torch, waiting until it was red hot.

"This is going to hurt, a lot, take this and bite down hard." Lunaria warned the woman, offering her a leather-bound stick.

The woman did not fight against her, biting down as hard as she could.

When Lunaria pressed the knife against the gash, the woman bit down even harder.

The knife was pulled away just a moment later, the flesh now melted together.

Unfortunately, there was not much she could do for the missing ear, so Lunaria just bandaged the woman's head. She was too dazed to fight against Lunaria.

She tied off the bandage and slumped onto the ground, exhausted. A soldier ran to her, offering a drink from his ladle and bucket. Lunaria looked up to him with thanks, only to see a boy, unlikely to have seen his sixteenth winter.

The ground trembled, vibrating as a monstrous roar shook the earth.

'He might not get the chance.'

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