Do not weep at your death. Weep for you have been given the chance to seize the greatest honour throughout all history. Weep for your children, for you will forever become the bedrock on which their homes will sit.

  - Excerpt from Czas, a Lubskan News Outlet.

  Mustafar spat out another globule of ash from his mouth as dived behind the wall and clutch the rifle to his chest. The bolt on the side stabbed into his chest another dozenth time today as one of the soldiers of the One-Seventeenth stood up from behind the ruined stone wall, dropped his own gun into it and pulled the trigger. Mustafar heard the rabid scream of the monster behind him collapse into a wet gurgle as it fell. Behind the grey uniform of the Imperial soldier, another survivor from Anghazi in ash-covered clothes took a firing position.

  Mustafar whispered a quiet prayer to Tanit, he had said it more than a hundred times today. A prayer to steady his thoughts more than to ask for anything. His hands made the movements off pure muscle memory, the switch on the magazine was pressed, it fell out, his arm went to the pocket in his trousers, he pulled another out. It slid in with the same, satisfying click of metal clinking against metal. He pulled back the bolt. And he took a deep breath as he looked up across at the sky.

  It was a drunk artist’s smattering of colours. Blue, to indicate that a unit was retreating. Red, for when retreat wasn’t possible. Green, for when the enemy was felled or forced to push back. And all the shades of orange, for the flames of Tartarus that crashed and exploded against the grey city ruins. Mustafar held his breath and closed his eyes for a moment. His family came to him in that moment.

  The smiles of his sons, Ibrahim and Hamza. The touch of his wife Rania. The weight of his daughter, Mona, as held her in his hands. This was the price to pay for their refuge in Epa. The soldier of the One-Seventeenth ducked to the ground just in time to avoid the snake of fire from surging over his head. This was the price to pay. The moment the searing flame and the howling of that fire passed over them and smashed into the wall of another home at the end of the street, they rose again.

  Mustafar’s eyes found a target immediately. A demon slightly taller than him, running straight ahead, one arm swinging a cleaver as long as his chest wall tall wildly in the air. Armoured boot thumped against the packed ash of the street and jumper body. The iron sights of the rifle found the demon’s face. Mustafar pulled the trigger. Over the sound of the battle around them, Mustafar listened to a tiny explosion that propelled a bullet forward, a series of clicks as his hands twisted the bolt action by themselves, the cutting off of those roars for his blood, a thump as the armoured creature fell backwards. This was the price to pay for them.

  If he had to pay it a million times, he would pay it a million times.

  Asmodeus looked over the ruins of the city in the distance. The fires of his own people and those burning lamps that slowly glided down shot out by the Ardans, pushed back the eternal nighttime brought on by Tartarus’ Ashen Skies and cast a rainbow of muted colours across the remains of Anghazi. The steel carcasses of its skyscrapers pointed up as if they wished to scrape down the steel sky.

  Asmodeus stood and watched. Could prisoners be taken? Within the cover of Ashen Skies, there wasn’t a chance of Imperial rescue at this point. Ashfront tactics were working so far. The demon stood in his black armour, his pauldrons smooths and circular, his tail waving for side to side, his horns pure white. A sign of Tartarian nobility, to obscure them would be dishonour. His red eyes found the Goddess that had caused so much trouble.

  Captain Mieszko held onto his rifle as he drew the flare-gun and fired it above his head. No specific direction, simply up, as he turned and across the crumbling ruins of a building that could have been a shop, a home, a small office, he didn’t know or care at this point. The sheer weight of demons running up the stairs had started to collapse the structure at this point. Cracks were running across what had been the top floor but now was the roof after the passing of the Ashfront had torn the entire top of the structure away.

  “RUN!” Mieszko shouted to the few remaining members who had made it to the roof. “THERE!” He pointed to the edge of the building, where a shot jump separated them from the next home. That one too had been similarly devastated by the Ashfront. Succubi and winged demons screamed and dived down from above as Mieszko set off into an immediate sprint. The flare gun somehow managed to find a way to click into its holster as the other hand held his rifle.

  “GO GO GO!” The other men shouted, one last magazine was emptied at the stairway as Mieszko’s ragged grey boots left the ground, he was in the air for all of a few seconds, eyes focused not on the streets below which were slowly being overran by demons that used their own fallen dead as cover as Imperial soldiers tried to put bullet after bullet into them. In the distance, a pillar of sand shot of the ground like a shark, swallowing a dozen of the monsters and dragging them underground.

  By the time Captain Mieszko landed, he felt something cold stab his shoulder. Wetness on his back, the direction of his jump slightly shift and extend upwards, then downwards as he fell off a blade. He didn’t bother to land on his feet, instead just slamming down on his stomach and rolling around before his mind registered the pain in his shoulder. A winged demon was in the air, an incubus on a pair of flapping wings, a spear in his hands. A spear with blood on it, his blood most likely.

  The other members of the team were in mid-air as more of the incubi were coming down upon them. The pain finally fit. A feeling as if his entire shoulder had been ripped apart, as if every strand of muscle in that region had been torn and ripped, set aflame and set to freeze at the same time. Mieszko screamed through it as he used all the agonizing force left in his body to raise his rifle and pull the trigger, shooting wherever and whenever, just into the sky to stop put holes in wings and bare, unarmoured chest.

  Asmodeus raised one arm into the air. No doubt the white-haired Goddess could be overwhelmed through sheer numbers eventually. She did not seem to have any powers or benefits of Divinity save for the standard speed, strength and size that all of them possessed. He watched her circle use her body weight to topple a hasty shieldwall that was forming to stop her. Then spin her around, that hair like a cloak of snow, as she cut the head off a demon. It was a thoroughly Epan fighting style, devoid of any grace or mercy or beauty and instead seeking to kill and main and incapacitate as quickly as possible.

  She would be overwhelmed eventually. If there was any single truth that Asmodeus had learned about Epan Divinity, is that they got tired just as everything else did. But she was holding back an entire street by herself, dancing from one side to another, making way only when the corpses of Asmodeus’ men made the ground too unstable to fight on.

  Asmodeus took a deep breath as his bow materialized into the air. A black shadow, its edges burning with lightless flames. So dark that it stood out even against the black sky. A weapon to hunt Divines far greater than whoever this Goddess was. He grabbed the bowstring, a wire of dark energies that set alight when he touched them.

  The bow was drawn, a pointed flame materialized within it.

  She would be overwhelmed eventually. There was no reason as to why he shouldn’t hurry it along though.

  “Fall back!” Tanit heard Olonia’s thunderous over the din of battle. Over the clatter of swords, the rapid gunfire, the chanting in the distance, the hissing of flares that had just been sent up into the sky and the low whirs of those that were beginning to burn up. The crashing of flame, the snapping of fires flying through the air. “FALL BACK!” Olonia roared again and Tanit finally took a step back. The soldiers in the outer districts of the city, now being overwhelmed, launched a series of blue flares for the sign of retreat that painted the world with a shade a shade of blue. Even the eternally grey and black sky was illuminated, as if it was the underside of an ocean for a moment.

  Tanit raised her hands and channelled her power to block off the street. For a moment, the ash that had been beaten down by boots and bodies rumbled, it cracked, and then it exploded. A wall of solid sand raised from underneath the ground in a yellow fog that quickly gave way once again to the falling ash. “RETREAT!” Tanit shouted for the men around her as she spread her hands out. The wall grew in length until it obscured the other streets as well, as far as Tanit could reach, until sweat burst out over her forehead.

  The Goddess of Ibya took a deep breath, let go, spun around and set off in a sprint to the next fall-back lines. It wouldn’t hold for long. She was not channelling stone here and pushing sand together to make stone took far too much energy her to handle on such a short notice. She just hoped it was enough.

  Succubi screamed from above as the men who had been shooting into the general mass of demons clustering into the streets that funnelled them along the smouldering streets of Anghazi turned their rifles upwards. Those winged demonesses did not wear armour and fire made for poor protection against a tiny piece of metal flying barrelling towards them. And Tanit ran, through the fire, through the flames, jumping over the bodies of demons that were ruined by holes and the bodies of humans that were split open by blade. Past the ruins of a city that had once been grand. Under black skies that came to destroy her lands, and under flares that the survivors were using to illuminate this devastated land.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Asmodeus took a deep breath, he steadied the weightless bow, twice his size. It reached down to his boot and far above even the marvellous white horns on his head. His red tail stopped moving. Imperial Goddess, whatever her name was. It was time to meet your end. The arrow of black flames stopped curdling and sharpened into a lance point. Asmodeus held the aim for one more second.

  For a moment, he stopped as a wall of sand was raised out of the grand. There was no taste of magic in the air though. So there must be another Divine. To think he would return with a pair today. Well, no matter. It did little to disturb his aim. It had been a long time since he had needed to bring this weapon out.

  A long time indeed.

  Captain Henek of the One Seventeenth watched through a series of binoculars as a flash of sheer darkness so clear it split the world ahead of him crossed from a nearby hill and directly into his Goddess. For a moment, the heat of the battle seemed to simmer down. The Tartarian force stopped advancing, the Imperial army took a moment to recover from that thunderclap of what had just been witnessed. Olonia did not even scream, she was flung backwards immediately, away from the troops she had been fighting with and straight down a street. One hand went to the radio immediately as his body operated on pure adrenaline and panic. “Captain Henek speaking, all Clerics, onto Olonia right now. The Goddess is wounded.”

  The order was given, the radio fell as it replied with a stern tone. “Cleric Team One, copy that. Moving in.” And Henek lay on top of the ruined tower that had once been the mayoral office of the city. It was the tallest steel carcass still remaining, someone needed to be here to scout wherever they were being encircled. They were indeed, but the question was of how fast, rather than if at this point.

  His eyes went to the massive sand dune that the One-Seventeen had crossed over when they first got to this area, the fear of what he had just watched only being kicked away when the instinct of battle kicked in when the demonic force around them let out a thunderous roar and charged with renewed vigour.

  What was that even?

  Asmodeus drew his bow again. The bait was set. Now to pick off the rest.

  Ardan loyalty was a predictable thing.

  Why did Mustafar run behind these men to cover a Lubskan Goddess? He wasn’t Imperial, he had never set foot within the Empire. He held no loyalty for Olonia, no love for Goddess of a nation that did not even border the same sea Ibya sat on. But he ran. The Empire had sent their mighty ships to carry away his family to safety, they sent their lovely Goddess to his land, they sent a full division for whatever reason it was. They even rescued Tanit.

  So Mustafar ran through tight city streets covered by ash, into the footsteps left behind by the team of Imperial soldiers, breathing heavily as they raced in their shorts and their light shirts, clothes made for the desert and not for the apocalypse of Ashen Skies. He ran as fires filled the passageways behind him, as ash fell from the air. As the thunderous drum of tens of thousands of demons rushing into the city set the beat of the invasion. Snakes of flame jumped across the roofs of the building and gave light to the small team of soldiers.

  And suddenly, they came to a stop. Mustafar grabbed onto the remains of a steel pole to not crash into the men ahead of him when he saw the broken body of Olonia lying impaled on the ground. He had heard of the snows of Lubska from the soldiers of the One-Seventeenth. The perfect white that resembled the hair of their Goddess. He didn’t know what it looked like back then.

  Now, he looked at a Goddess barely holding herself up, looking up to the sky, tears in her eyes, her face and clothes smattered with the dark grey of the cursed ash that still fell from the sky and the darker red of blood. Blood that she spilled and blood that was her own. And behind her, a sheet of perfect snow-white from her hair.

  A team of Clerics had gotten there. Asmodeus took a deep breath. He had read the reports of Kavaa running treason against the White Pantheon. It was one thing to read something, and another to confirm it directly with one’s eyes though.

  Tanit came to a stop and spread her hands out to catch the men next to her from running into the open street where Olonia still lay wounded, still breathing, still clutching at her stomach. Around her, a dozen different corpses of men who had come to save her, each of their bodies impaled with some perfect black rod and set alight by fire that devoured light. “STOP!” Tanit raised her hands to the Lubskan soldiers that tried to push past her.

  Olonia heard her, she turned her head. Those blue eyes settled on Tanit for a moment, the Goddess of Lubska closed them, closed her mouth, gave a tiny shake of her head and smiled. Tanit would not live to see it. Not from this Goddess who had been sent to train her. Not from this Goddess she had watched fearlessly command the One-Seventeenth through a desert of ash. Not when they had witnessed the destruction of that massive portal. Not when they stood in a port city capable of pickup. Not when they had received instruction that salvation was on its way.

  The Empire would come. Tanit was sure of it. Olonia said they would not leave their own behind how many times?

  Tanit raised her hands forwards. She didn’t make a movement, two of the soldiers rushed out to try and give cover to their Goddess. Immediately, two more black arrows came to impale them against the ground. One for each man, it was impossible to tell which one touched the ground first. Lightless flame consumed them. And Tanit moved the sand from the below the Olonia. She made a chamber. She prepared a wall. She made a claw. She shifted with all the power in her body.

  Olonia took a deep breath again, her hand dropped from her chest. And Olonia was swallowed by the ground instantly. A hook of sand pulled her below as a wall moved up to shield her from view. The men stopped running forwards finally, realising what Tanit was doing. A moment later, a black arrow penetrated through the sandwall to where Olonia had just been.

  Asmodeus took a deep breath as he watched the wall of sand disappear. A second arrow had been sent to finish off that Goddess. Well no matter, it changed nothing in the grand scheme of things. One of them was out of action, the other would be panicking. These very obviously were not Arascus’ Princesses he was dealing with. But then that lot had never been such easy prey as to be incapacitated by a single shot.

  He could take his time here. Asmodeus licked his lips. To think he was lucky enough to capture two Ardan Goddesses.

  “Come, come. Olonia!” Tanit said through tears in her eyes as she raced back towards friendly lines with her friend in her hands. “Don’t die on me. Please don’t die here.” And so, inch by inch, doorway by doorway, building by building, street by street, Anghazi slowly fell as a tide of flame descended upon it from all sides save the filthy black ocean.

  Back, humanity was pushed. Back, towards their first line. That fell in another series of red flares. Without a lead Divine to rally them, with Tanit struggling to search for sands in lands that had been packed down by concrete and tarmac, she had to conserve energy to keep moving. What had been the sand swallowing tens of demons at a time was now the sand breaching through stone and rock to make explosions of grey dust that collapsed the nearby structures more often than not. Olonia was handed off to a team of Clerics that dragged her away from the battle as they tried to put out the flames eating at her stomach.

  And so the second line fell, the perimeter tightened around the central market street. Every now and then, an arrow would come out of nowhere to fell a men who leaned down the wrong street or stood up on a roof. The market street fell. The flood of demons and fire pushed onwards. Hounds raced down streets, greater demons slowly pushed through buildings. Legionnaires spilled into streets. Ammunition slowly ran out as the Imperial forces were pushed further and further, until their backs were to the seaside.

  Asmodeus turned and looked north, towards the sea of black pitch. It wasn’t the five mountains that gave him pause, he knew of the Imperial fleet, he was developing tactics that could be effectively used to breach the gap without the expenditure of tens of thousands of live per ship. Cannons brimmed on their front, already raised and ready to shell, their control towers were lit up by bright white spotlight, their entire structures were covered in blue veins that obviously had to be magic. A mad spiderweb that hid beneath the cover of chaos even though it was obviously ordered. Shields then, Elassa had used the same sort of thing to cover White Pantheon fortresses a thousand years ago.

  Asmodeus took a step back. The five moving mountains were a mere hindrance for him. It was not them that caused the jump in his heart. Victory’s sweetness in his mouth suddenly curdled into a rancid taste.

  It was the single of circle of gold floating in mid-air. The silhouette of a man before it.

  Far too tall to be just a human.

  Asmodeus had seen it before.

  Olonia fell onto her back as her men mounted defences on the piers and the docks of Anghazi. She looked tried to breath as Clerics attempted to stabilize her wounds and put the black flames licking her stomach out. One of the soldiers ripped off his shirt and was patting her down. It did little to relieve the pain or the poison spreading through her. “Stay awake Goddess. Stay awake.” Olonia listened to the Clerics filling her with life even as it drained away from the flames still eating at her stomach.

  She heard it first. Song. An anthem she recognised. Her own. Lubska’s. Olonia’s head fell to her side, her vision blurry as she watched the battle on the pier. The collection of survivors, both the Ibyans and the One-Seventeenth, had been pushed to the very edges of the docks, where the only cover was old containers and sandbags that had been thrown together in moments of final preparation. Where no cover and no quarter was given. “Stay awake Goddess!”

  Demons still poured out the buildings, falling as they did. Using their own as cover. At range, even the spellcasters were outmatched. Yet range did not matter when the only way to truly extend the gap was to pull back. “Olonia! Goddess Olonia!” Where was there to retreat when the ocean was behind them?

  And yet, she still heard her own song. So this is what happened when national mascots died then. She wondered what it would be like. Definitely better than here. She watched a massive greater demon that had to push through a building to get to the docks finally. Its eyes found the pier Olonia lay on. It saw Tanit ahead of her. It crushed its own as it made way. Even when a pillar of sand leapt out of the murky waters to grab at it and pull it in, it tore through them. When it got to the pier, the snake of dark, wet sand that slammed into it only slowed it down. “GODDESS LOOK!” What was she to look at exactly? Their demise.

  A greatsword fell from the sky like a pillar of heaven’s judgement. The demon took another step, then collapsed as its head rolled off its body. “GODDESS!” One of the Clerics said. “GODDESS STAY! HOLD! LOOK! WE’RE SAVED!” Hands caught the side of her head and forcefully twisted it to look the other way, into the Eparika that ash had swallowed and on which nothing was coming.

  Yet something was. Five towers in the distance, made up of endless spotlights as they got closer. The song wasn’t from her mind, it was from those ships. Olonia’s heart beat once again as her mouth fell open and her eyes went wide.

  Ashen skies, filthy, lightless, in all the shades that a grey ceiling could be, turned gold.