Raucous war cries erupted from the Vanguard’s ranks, each and every Revenant standing in defiance of the odds. Even Davon, usually subdued in these displays, found it hard to suppress a cheer.

  On the other side of Grant’s barrier, the Crimson Reavers shifted uneasily. Tenebris merely laughed.

  “Interesting,” he growled, his mocking voice echoing over both sides of the battlefield. “The vermin still have fight left in them.”

  “Now, my Vanguard!” Grant’s shout rang in Davon’s ears. “Deliver them our wrath!”

  Grant pulled his Reliquary from the ground, shattering the barrier he’d conjured. In the absence of its golden light, the world was once again cast into shades of ominous red.

  But the Vanguard were not daunted. The enchantment of Grant’s words was still thrumming through their veins, bolstering them to meet the heightened challenge of their foes. The Revenants showed no restraint as they charged madly into the enemy.

  Blades clashed, shields shattered, and enemy soldiers fell to the ground. Watching from above, Davon raised his bow and began adding his projectiles to the unfolding chaos in the streets. Each of his shots took a Crimson Reaver with it, adding more bodies to the mess quickly forming under the feet of the combatants.

  “MARCH FORWARD!” Tenebris roared. “PUSH THEM BACK!”

  Following their general’s command, the Crimson Reavers surged to fill the space left by their fallen comrades. Both sides suffered losses. Still, the Vanguard was steadily pushing the enemy back. For every fallen Revenant, dozens of Crimson Reavers fell, and not only regular soldiers. Sergeants, Heavies, and Crossbowmen numbered among the slain.

  Movement by the inner wall caught Davon’s attention. The gates to the inner city were opening to admit a large group of war beasts. The hulking Crimson Reavers stepped through and strode onward, moving towards the front lines.

  Davon smiled. Reinforcements… good. That means they’re sweating.

  His smile faded as the beasts turned the tide yet again in the enemy’s favor. With the Crimson Reavers pushing forward, the Vanguard ceased their forward momentum, forced to focus on holding their ground. Now, however, each hole they made in the enemy’s lines was filled almost immediately.

  Davon’s heart began to sink. He recognized this was an exercise in futility that could only end one way. Even though the Vanguard outmatched the Crimson Reavers in almost every way, the sheer amount of foes would be enough to wear the Revenants down eventually.

  Davon tried to do his part. He loosed Scattershot after Scattershot until he felt the strings connecting him to his Reliquary begin to strain. Cursing under his breath, he reached for one of the enchanted knives tucked into his belt.

  The Vanguard archers around him continued to barrage the Crimson Reavers with arrows and simple magic, but Davon took his time. He aimed carefully. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent the knife into the middle of the Crimson Reavers’ formation.

  The resulting explosion engulfed a dozen Crimson Reavers, leaving only ash in its wake. But before Davon could feel any satisfaction, a dozen more enemies stepped forward. He had merely cleared the way for them.

  Grant’s voice rose above the battlefield as he wielded his giant sword, cleaving several Crimson Reavers in half with each swing.

  “Give them your all, Vanguard!”

  Spurred on by the command, the Revenants on the rooftops unleashed a bombardment of magical abilities. Explosions of various elements shook the earth and raised a cloud of smoke, briefly halting combat.

  When the smoke cleared, Davon smiled grimly at the sight of dozens upon dozens of fallen Crimson Reavers in the street.

  It’s a shame we can’t do that more often, he lamented, as another tide of enemies flooded into the space.

  While this barrage of powerful magic tipped the scales slightly in the Vanguard’s favor, there were still hundreds of Crimson Reavers left. And Davon knew that if the Revenants blew all their strength on the cannon fodder, the more powerful enemies waiting in the inner city would have an easy time sweeping the Vanguard away.

  Shaking his head, he raised his bow and settled into the archer’s tempo.

  All he could do was keep fighting.

  The bloody conflict continued, bodies piling high beneath the combatants’ feet. Glancing down, Davon saw that the main clash had moved vertically upward. The piled slain now reached half the height of the barricades.

  “I grow bored of this,” Tenebris suddenly growled. The general reared up on his hind legs. Taking huge pieces of the ramparts in both claws as he raised them, he prepared his own attack.

  “BRACE!” Grant commanded.

  A scattering of Revenants combined their magic to create one massive golden barrier.

  Davon’s sinking heart leapt into his throat. He knew how this clash would go. He’d seen it when he faced the general alongside Kai and Lyla.

  Tenebris pulled back one arm, wielding a massive boulder in his claw. Then he cast it forward with a terrifying roar.

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  The boulder flew in a direct trajectory towards the Vanguard. To Davon’s surprise, the projectile shattered against the Revenants’ barrier and scattered into stone shrapnel. The force of the impact was enough to send the shrapnel back into the Crimson Reaver formation with deadly force.

  But the blow had left a web of cracks along the Vanguard’s barrier. It was painfully obvious to Davon what another attack would do.

  Growling with frustration, Tenebris pulled back his other hand and loosed a second boulder.

  Time seemed to slow. The sound of shattering glass rang in Davon’s ears as the barrier fell. He watched in horror as the boulder, too, was broken into pieces by the impact. Only this time, without the barrier to bounce the fragments back, the stone shrapnel fell upon the remaining Vanguard soldiers. Nearly a dozen Revenants were reduced to bloody smears in an instant.

  Laughing heartily, Tenebris leaned down and ripped more stone from the inner walls, preparing for another attack.

  “EMMA, NOW!” Grant bellowed over the chaos. “VANGUARD, RETREAT TO THE SIDES!”

  The urgency of Grant’s command both confused and stirred the remaining warriors to action. The Vanguard formation immediately split into two halves, each hugging the sides of the Duke’s Road. Davon and the rest of the ranged Vanguard continued their assault on the enemy to cover the main force’s retreat.

  The roof beneath Davon’s feet shook as the earth rumbled. A strange feeling washed over Davon, as if his energy was being pulled towards the outer gate. Looking in that direction, he saw Emma standing by the Godslayer engine, her hand on a lever. She was repositioning the massive cylinder to aim at Tenebris.

  Davon struggled to maintain balance as the rune-work covering the Godslayer continued pulling energy from its surroundings, shaking the earth ever more violently. A nagging instinct at the back of Davon’s mind told him to take cover.

  He listened to it without hesitation.

  Grabbing Lyla by the arm, Davon dove to the other side of the roof. He braced his feet to prevent them both from sliding over the edge, then reflexively covered Lyla while raising one hand to protect his own head.

  The earth shook hard enough to nearly knock them off of the roof. Even behind his closed eyelids, Davon’s world went white. He didn’t hear the blast. Not really. His ears exploded with tinnitus, blocking out any other sound.

  Blinded and deafened, Davon panicked. His entire body spasmed with pain as the massive discharge of energy almost pushed him into overload. He clutched onto the roof like a madman, pulling the wooden shingles off without even realizing it.

  Slowly, the ringing in Davon’s ears subsided, and darkness returned to his closed eyes. When he finally dared to open them, stinging pain forced him to close them again instantly. Davon took a deep, shuddering breath. Forcing his eyes open, he blinked away the pain and looked towards Lyla.

  The poor girl still had her hands over her ears, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. As he watched, her eyes fluttered open, meeting his concerned gaze.

  “Are you alright?” Davon asked.

  Lyla nodded slowly. “Shaken, but fine.”

  Leaning against each other, the two Revenants stood up and staggered to the other side of the roof. They looked down together at the street below them.

  Davon was filled with a mixture of horror and amazement.

  All of the snow in the street had melted. The piles of bodies were gone, disintegrated by the blast. The ground was covered in a mix of blood, ash and water, the slurry gently drifting down the slight slope of the Duke’s Road.

  No Crimson Reavers remained on street level. Davon could only assume they were the ash gently drifting to the ground like a grim snow. Dazed Revenants were trying to stumble back into formation, barely able to lift their weapons.

  Above everything, a trail of bright blue energy was still visible, little wisps occasionally splitting off of the gathered mass.

  Davon turned his attention to the inner walls. The gates themselves still stood, but the stone building above them was gone. Only the Godslayer’s bright trail filled the space where the gatehouse had once stood.

  Peering closely, Davon then saw Tenebris, sprawled out over the ramparts on his back. A long trail of blood snaked its way down the wall from the general’s left shoulder.

  Yet, the great beast was not still. Davon could see the enemy leader’s chest slowly rising and falling.

  A few moments later, Tenebris stirred, Slowly, he rolled onto his side. Even more slowly, he pushed himself up onto his feet. Davon saw blood pouring from a stump on the general’s back.

  The Crimson Reaver general was missing one of his wings.

  Wordlessly, Tenebris surveyed the battlefield. Ash was still drifting down, settling on what little remained of the barricades and towers set up by the Crimson Reavers.

  Davon raised his bow weakly towards Tenebris, ready to die in defense of his comrades should the general decide to attack.

  Instead, Tenebris turned away without so much as a sound. Davon watched as the Crimson Reaver general began to slither down the inner walls, leaving the battlefield behind.

  As the immediate threat of the general disappeared into the inner city, Davon suddenly thought of his friends in the street below. If the Godslayer had wrought so much destruction on everything in its path…

  Panic seized him, and he gripped Lyla’s arm.

  “We need to find Kai and Grant.”

  Still wobbly on his feet, Davon allowed himself to slide off of the roof and all the way to the ground, barely sticking the landing. He was dimly aware of Lyla floating down after him as he quickly scanned the remaining Revenants. It didn’t take him long to spot the hulking figure of Grant. The old Revenant was busy trying to gather the remaining Vanguard members around him.

  “Grant!” Davon called, stumbling towards the giant of a man as Lyla landed behind him with a grunt.

  Grant looked the pair up and down before chuckling weakly.

  “Battered, beaten, and still able to stand,” Grant commented. “You three continue to impress.”

  “Us three? Is Kai here?” Davon asked between labored breaths. While the pain was fading, every nerve and muscle in his body still felt frayed, as if on the verge of overloading.

  “I’m here,” Kai announced as he pushed his way through the crowd, using his axe as a walking stick. “What a shock, eh?”

  Relief surged through Davon. Reunited once again, the trio exchanged weary smiles before turning to Grant.

  “So… what now?” Davon asked.

  “Now, we hunker down and try to rest,” Grant stated simply. “I don’t imagine anyone on either side of this conflict is willing or able to fight after the Godslayer shot.”

  Lyla’s eyes were still wide. “Shouldn’t we worry about Tenebris recovering while we rest?”

  “That was the Godslayer engine he was struck by.” Grant shook his head with another chuckle. “It will be years before that wound heals.”

  “What about healing magic?” Kai pointed out, leaning against his axe for support. “Won’t that speed up the process?”

  Grant clapped a massive hand on Kai’s shoulder. “That weapon was designed to kill gods, my boy. Disruption of healing magic, or any magic really, is part of its deadly charm. Any attempt to heal those wounds will cause them to deteriorate further. Now come on, let’s find a place to fortify. We need to be ready for our enemies to retaliate.”

  Grant’s words brought little relief to Davon. The Godslayer had failed to kill the general. Even if Tenebris was weakened, the Vanguard still had the rest of the Crimson Reaver army to worry about. As long as Tenebris lived, the Crimson Reavers would fight on.

  And Davon knew damn well that the remainder of their army was bound to be stronger than what the Revenants had faced so far.