Gareth often failed, and in particularly grand fashion, to combine the energies of his steam breath weapon, but in the past month he managed to control it ever so slightly. It needed time, focus, and skill to accomplish, so no combat applications as of yet. Not so for his other breath weapons. Oliver helped him incorporate the other quick-fire breath weapons into his basic katas, and Gareth had an absolute BLAST! It's one thing to swing a sword around, yet it's an entirely different level of cool to open your mouth and fucking incinerate some poor target! Needless to say, even though it slowed down his progression, it was well worth the ability.

  “Good! Slash…slash. Do the spin, and just as you come out of the spin, as soon as you see your opponent: breath weapon! Now-Now-Now!...A bit too late, but focus on that next time.” Oliver continued on patiently as if Gareth hadn't just messed it up for the umpteenth time in a row. Focussing on controlling his breath, while out of breath, and needing to focus on his movesets...was difficult. Yet, he persevered with a stubbornness unique to an immortal striving for freedom and independence.

  During the last month of mostly training, he had rapidly gained weight. He now weighed a staggering 58 kilograms of pure, unadulterated, muskles, YYEAAHHH! They even went so far as to find Gareth a bunch of stormic aligned spiritual herbs that he could incorporate into his meals, which slightly tempered his body when he drank it as tea. He also learned that that just meant they were poisonous. He also-also learned that he could...smoke said spiritual herbs. They were some premo herbs as well and the state of mind it put him in legit helped with meditation.

  He was still pretty lean, but he felt considerably stronger, fit, and full of energy. It felt amazing. He could now put out a reliable 100 pushups, situps, and squats; and a fourth of that in pull-ups.

  The weapons exercises extended well past three hours now, but he was still limited in how long he could reliably pay attention in the other lessons. Guanji assured him this would become easier after level 10, so Gareth was looking forward to that. His mental endurance was lacking so severely that it led to more dangerous mistakes while handling weapons. Nevertheless, he felt good.

  It was in the height of this self-admiration in the mirror that a massive GONG rang through the city.

  Jarred out of his pose, he hurriedly got dressed and ran out of the bathroom.

  “Master Guanji?!” He called into the quiet house. His only reply was something hauntingly awe inspiring.

  All across the city, in each cardinal direction, coordinated drums started beating:

  Ka-dum Ka-dum, dem, dum, dem, dum, dem, dum

  Ka-dum Ka-dum, dem, dum, dem, dum, dem, dum

  Ka-dum Ka-dum, dem, dum, dem, dum, dem, dum

  It echoed across the entire city and unknown to Gareth, helped the generals coordinate their strategies.

  He rushed to the front door and found master Guanji in the kitchen, fully armed and armoured, packing Gareth a lunch at lightning speeds.

  “What's going on?” Gareth asked, slightly out of breath from all the excitement. The drums had an energising effect on him for some reason.

  “Ah! Gareth, apologies, I was lost in my own world. What did you ask?” He said and wrapped the sandwich he finished in rice paper, tied with a bit of twine, and handed it to Gareth.

  “What's with all the drums? And why are you armed to the teeth?” He asked, his voice rising starkly in pitch.

  Guanji was indeed armed to the teeth. A long sword angled at his hip, its handle a crimson red leather with a ruby set in the pommel. The crossguard had four crossbars, two of them set up at a 45° angle, with gnarly hooks at the end. Across his chest were six throwing knives in a bandolier, a large dirk, and a few easily accessible pouches. On his right hip a shortsword hung nearly vertically so as to not get in the way.

  His armour was a mixture of black cloth and red metal plates that covered the most critical areas, but little else. He wore a full scale-patterned, open-faced helm with a small plate that bridged his nose. Now, something that Gareth had noticed at the training arena were that people stylised their armour as a form of self expression. Well, Guanji was expressing the fuck out'a himself, as his armour had a serious number of spikes and hooks on it. On the knees, vambraces, pauldrons; big spikes, small spikes, curved spikes and dull spikes. Oliver had taught him that textured armour was counterproductive, as it was a place for a blade to bite into, so Guanji's armour seemed counterintuitive. Yet, he was an untold number of years old, so who was Gareth to deliver critique? The last and most dashing part of his armour was a bright white ponytail on the back of his scale-patterned helm.

  “It is near Mid-Night, the Darklings are attacking.” Guanji said as he started buttering up another sandwich.

  “Oh shit! What do we do?!” Gareth asked and nearly ran for his sword before he realised it was just made of wood and he probably wanted to hear what Guanji said.

  “We are not doing anything. You are going to stay here, where it is safe. Do you remember the biggest tree at the back of the house?”

  Faced with such a random question, Gareth answered instinctually, “Wha-uh, yeah.”

  “A hidden door will be revealed to you if you hold your hand to it for 10 seconds. Climb to the top, there is a secret observatory where you can observe the city. Do. Not. Leave it. Do you understand?” His tone and eye contact were deathly serious as he took a very big, and very delicious bite from his sandwich.

  “But I'm immortal, they couldn't kill me if they tried.” He protested.

  “Killing is not a Darkling's only goal. They would abduct you and take you to their city of darkness, where you cannot escape because you will be unable to see anything for a thousand miles. I trust you remember your experience at an Oni’s hand?”

  Gareth stood there a second, staring…then, “So, just the biggest tree?” Gareth asked and half turned to the back door.

  Guanji chuckled mirthfully at the quick flip in enthusiasm, “Yes, the biggest one.” he said and handed Gareth a full ham, along with another sandwich.

  “Now, get going, I do not want you to miss the show.” he winked.

  "What about Ellisandra? I'm her Protector, shouldn't I be with her?" Gareth asked, torn between duty and self-preservation.

  "Protector-in-training, my dear disciple. While I admire your gumption, you would unfortunately just get in the way. Soon you will join us on the parapets of war, but for now you must bide your time and train."

  In a blur of speed Guanji disappeared and reappeared, then handed Gareth an actual metal sword. It was a plain tier 0 high carbon folded steel bastard sword: a beginners weapon, but one that he had not held since that first day he had nicked his foot playing with it. Countless hours of training and repetition flooded through his brain.

  It feels comfortable in my hand - he noted.

  He did not say anything because his pride still rankled, but he nodded and strapped the sword to his hip in a practiced motion. Gareth frowned at the ham as he nevertheless went outside and quickly found the largest pine tree: a towering 140 feet tall. He held his hand to its rough bark, and a large golden outline of a door lit up on the massive trunk of the tree. It revealed a thick steel door, which he ponderously pulled open to reveal a spiral staircase beyond, lit with orange mage-lights.

  He stepped inside and heaved the heavy door closed again, turning the wheel to lock it in place, kinda like those submarine doors he'd seen in movies. All sound cut out as he did: the rain, the drums, the frogs and the crickets all went silent. All Gareth could hear was his own breathing and the tinnitus ringing in his ears.

  Ham and sandwich in hand, he made his way up the carved wooden staircase, wide enough to accommodate only a single person. The stairs seemed to have been carved straight out of the tree, each steps' corner sanded smooth and round to give it a soft, homey vibe with all the orange lighting. The staircase was comfortably warm, especially since Gareth had gotten soaked on his way to the tree. It smelled of pine tree, though was not overwhelming - surprising given that he was inside the tree.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  After many winding stairs, Gareth reached another steel submarine door and rolled the wheel to open it, then locked it behind himself. The room beyond seemed to be a small room/observatory. It was way larger on the inside than the actual girth of the tree should ever have allowed, so Gareth assumed spatial fuckery was afoot. 10x10x10 room, with 360° windows, enchanted exactly like the viewing glasses on the wall to filter out all water, allowed him to see each part of the city clearly. It was sparsely adorned with one table, two chairs, and binoculars. That's it. The windows, while allowing him to see 360° around, were only a few hands wide, so he either had to stand if he wanted to see outside, or sit comfortably and see nothing at all.

  Inconvenient.

  His high vantage point, along with ignoring the cloud cover, allowed him to see the maelstrom of fighting lighting up the dark Night air. The first hour of the siege was quiet, but at the 45 minute mark everything went to shit. Hundreds pitch-skinned creatures with leathery bat wings, chitinous dragonfly wings, feathered angel wings, and any other method of flying, dive-bombed the city from above. The Nightstalker branch of the Adventurers guild rose to meet them.

  Night and Day required such vastly different fighting styles and methodologies that the adventurers guild was essentially split in two: The Nightstalkers and the White Orchids. Gareth watched as hundreds of Nightstalker adventurers rose to meet with the descending army of Darklings. Gareth barely had time to process their arrival before they clashed.

  Brief flashes of blinding bright light lit the dark Night as the warriors clashed. Darklings were intercepted, or slipped through and landed on the city below to wreak havoc. A manticore Nightstalker rider met a bat-winged Darkling midair. They moved too fast for Gareth's eyes to follow before the darkling fell to the ground in two pieces, its top half still scrabbling uselessly at the man’s armour. With a snarl, the manticore’s snake tail dragged the top half off and away, throwing it down to the distant ground below. Elsewhere, a man floating nobly on thin air made giant swirls of green mana sweep into and through any darklings it came across; which made some of them explode and some of them just fall apart like wet sand. The Darklings were extremely hard to spot in the darkness of Night, and the only reason he could even do so in the first place was because the elemental attacks raining down on them lit up their pretty/alien features. Some looked like the Krippinfay, others like dark-skinned humans, but the overwhelming majority had no eyes, large teeth protruding from their mouths, pointed bat ears, and a mean disposition.

  After the first hour mark since the battle started Gareth saw that some parts of the outer district were actively on fire. Luckily, he could already see people swarming over the area and throwing empty buckets that somehow still managed to extinguish the flames. Frowning, Gareth pulled his eye away from the binoculars before facepalming, “Ah, the glass ignores all the water. I can't see the water in the buckets.”

  Hundreds of people fought in the sky: squadrons of griffon riders acted like cavalry and ploughed through sections where the fighting was heaviest. Some people managed to somehow fly through the air on giant swords, which they used to gruesome effect by harrying those at the edges of aerial fights. They looked like pro-surfers as they twisted midair and sliced at strafing Darklings. It looked sick as fuck and Gareth wanted a flying sword.

  The fighting seemed to be heaviest in the air itself, as he guessed the darklings wanted to straight-up just avoid the walls entirely. Hundreds of winged, mounted, and blatantly flying Darklings swept through the air, all aiming for the giant city tree at Volun's centre. While many Darklings successfully managed to get past the fighting above, none managed to reach the city tree as a single figure stood between them and the glittering lifeline of the city.

  It was too far away to make out the who exactly was fighting, unfortunately, but Gareth saw the results of his fighting. He met each bolt of mana with a glowing white shield, each Darkling with a giant white spear, and killed them with passing ease. None yet had managed to challenge him, so Gareth looked away from him and to the distant wall.

  After more than three hours of constant fighting, Gareth started to get hungry and silently thanked Guanji for the sandwich. He also stress-ate the piece of ham.

  The fighting in the sky gradually died out, but the walls were livelier than ever. He couldn't see past the walls as they were solid stone, but he could see defenders on the parapets; racing from one spot to another, hurling spells down at what he assumed to be an invading army.

  Lightly armoured brawlers, bruisers, monks, and spear wielders swarmed to where the Darklings actually managed to climb the walls, stalling until the heavy armoured halberdiers, sword masters, and mounted defenders caught up to push them back or kill them. Archers and mages supported those, but also shot over the wall at creatures below. There was even one section where, to Gareth’s horror, the wall was completely overrun. Six hier-tiered Darklings had managed to gain a foothold for their weaker - but more numerous - underlings: A heavily armoured shield and mace wielder, a lithe and dextrous spear wielder, a speedster swordmaster, a spellsword fighter that looked like a Sith for all intents and purposes, a dark robed supporting healer that kept them all alive, and a spell-slinging mage that cleared vast swaths of defenders with giant plumes of black magic. The defenders were fighting a tactical retreat when all of a sudden, 3 people just seemed to fuckin Arrive!

  The first was a man that lifted his hands and spewed fire over the entire 200 ft overrun section. The stone wall was as unbothered with the fire as the fire was with the rain, but the weak chaff of the enemy lines crumbled as tens of darklings were incinerated. The darkling healer was actively bringing some back but then the second person arrived.

  A spear wielding, winged Valkyrie hoplite in white armour plummeted down from the sky above and cleanly bisected the healer, then darted back into the sky. She arked through the air before landing on the spellsword and halted his seemingly unstoppable advance. She acted as an impassable bottleneck on the right side of the wall, while a blue-robed master swordsman carved through the tank and spear wielder on the left. As Gareth watched these two masters work, he realised why it was called martial arts.

  The man never stopped moving, never stepped wrong, and always left one single fatal slash in his wake. It was not that he was immune to being hit, but each time he moved with the blow of his attacker, and struck out with impossible flexibility and precision. The blows that landed barely scratched his high tier silk armour, while he retaliated to deadly effect.

  The Valkyrie activated an ability that formed a wall of light on either side of her, leaving her as the enemies’ only way to flee from the whirling dervish that was the swordsman. And yet each time they approached, they got a spear in the skull for their trouble. It didn't even appear challenging to her because she was piling up the bodies quicker than they could get to her. The Nightstalker mage was having a heated exchange of spells with the enemy mage, keeping him occupied and away from his compatriots.

  Gareth shat himself when a massive ballista bolt from outside the city came careening towards the glowing Valkyrie, but she merely raised her golden glowing shield and took the six metre long bolt like a fucking boss. It shattered and she calmly stabbed another creature through the skull.

  Like Guanji said, Gareth noticed a large range in the type of creatures attacking the city: some were man-bat looking guys, others were sprinting zombies. Black, red, or yellow oozes and slimes crawled inexorably across the battlements, swallowing and dissolving anyone unlucky enough to touch them. Long-eared dark-fay-looking motherfuckers with naked prehensile tails tipped with blades stalked the battlefields, slashing achilles heels then darted back to the what shadows they could find on the brightly lit wall. Hordes of imps, swarms of warbats, and what looked disturbingly like an Eldritch Horror fought along the wall and clawed over its side to land in the city below. Some died from the fall, many did not, and Gareth was growing concerned because he couldn't see past the houses in the residential district to see how they were being dealt with.

  It was easy to see which sections of the city and wall had fallen to the Darklings as they snuffed out all forms of light they could find, turning the environment to their favour. Luckily one mage seemed able to create a strobing light effect that disoriented them to the extreme, then it was just a simple matter of cleaning them up.

  The Darklings won ground, yes, but this was the moment when Gareth truly saw the strength of Volun shine. Each person in the city, great or small, baker or hairdresser, knew how to fight. Gareth saw the brothel come alive with swirling petals of ruby red roses that perforated anything that came near. He saw the baker unleash plumes of high-gluten flour that erupted into great conflagrations at a spark. He saw the street sweeper screw off the tip of his broom, revealing a spear-head that he used to impale a six foot tall darkling. As more and more Darklings poured over the walls, the city seemed to come alive. The farming district became a writhing deathtrap as druids controlled the plants to deadly effect. Water mages fought near the Crystalline river, though their fights were somewhat lackluster as Gareth couldn't actually see their attacks, only the dismembered results of their efforts. The temples were left alone, even the Darklings weren't that brave.

  In the following hours the most fucked-up scary moment Gareth experienced was when a man-bat guy landed on a branch right outside the observatory. He had just seen this same one rip a red-robed man in half like it was nothing, and feared that he was next. The man-bat was obviously highly tiered, so there was nothing Gareth would be able to do if the thing attacked him.

  He started spinning up his lungs for a breath attack anyway when, with a massive zap that would set any mosquito zapper to shame, a lightning bolt arched from a branch above and into its head, dropping it instantly. He almost lost control of his flame breath due to the surprise, but barely managed to reel it in before he could set fire to his small hidey hole.

  Other than that, and snacking occasionally on the massive ham, ten more hours of fighting passed. As boredom set in, Gareth started seeing the ebbs and tides of battle more clearly. There was never really a pattern, but he could see that each action of the attacker caused an equal and opposite reaction within the defender. Each time they took the walls, a quick reaction force (Q.R.F) would be sent to keep them busy until the heavy hitters showed up. Each time the Volans sent out a party, they would be intercepted. Energy attacks were countered by elemental shields, depending on the type of attack.

  There were even a few times when singular people were sent out on either side, obviously the elders. Their clashes lit up the sky with flashes of golden flares, abyssal black blotches, and angry red rumbles.

  Gareth saw intelligence behind their tactics. A cunningness that he would not have assumed from the general ‘Darkling’ title. He had some questions for Guanji once this was over. Why are they fighting if they are capable of reason? What is this war about?