The western gate lay in ruins, but the defenders did not falter.
Their captains stood at the front, steel and faith in hand.
And when the tide surged through those ruins…
Astoria moved before anyone.
She called upon the first sequence of her cultivation technique — The Emberstride.
Her body surged as mana flooded her limbs, muscles reinforcing with light while her blades shimmered red-hot and ice-blue.
Astoria drew a breath and leapt forward, meeting a troll that thundered toward the shield line.
Her sword swung once, and three phantom blades of fire erupted with it, matching her motion before slashing at the troll at different angles.
One stroke became four.
The troll's head, arms, and torso were all carved apart in that same instant, each wound sizzling as flames ate into flesh.
Its lower half staggered forward a few more steps more before collapsing with a heavy thud.
Knights laughed in disbelief, their fear burning away as her blades carved paths where no man could have.
To them she wasn't merely a captain — she was the Sword Saint, and for that heartbeat, invincible
But Astoria did not wait for it to fall.
Her violet eyes were already fixed on the next beast as her twin blades flashed again, carving it into four frozen pieces before it had time to roar.
Each swing of her swords either split a monster into four or cut four monsters clean in two.
Watching her carve through monsters while still fighting with less than half her strength, the knights roared louder.
Their cheers shook the air, voices rising sky-high as morale blazed brighter than the shaman's fireballs.
"That's our captain!"
"Damn straight!"
Faris wasn't idle either.
He invoked the second sequence of his cultivation technique — Frozen Harrow
His halberd, half-blade and half-staff, shimmered with frost until shards of jagged ice sprouted along its length.
And with a surge of mana he unleashed them in a volley of frozen lances that tore through the night like volleys loosed by a whole regiment of mages.
The shards struck home, piercing into the bodies of trolls, orcs, and werewolves that rushed the gate.
And a beat later — they detonated.
The ice inside their flesh exploded outward, shattering into frozen shrapnel that ripped through organs and bone.
Monsters convulsed under showers of their own blood, collapsing in heaps of mutilated corpses as the next wave trampled over them.
All the while Serenya's lips hadn't stopped moving.
"O Dawnmother, who watches over the broken,
O Dawnmother, who cradles the fallen,
O Dawnmother, flame of valor unquenched,
O Dawnmother, who heralds each dawn,
Lend me the pace of your light,
Lend me the weight of your might,
So that I may grind this evil to dust in your name,
So that we may bury this horror beneath your grace."
And as the final words of her prayer escaped her lips, the night sky split open as a beam of golden light fell upon her, shrouding her frame in a radiance that burned brighter than torch or moon.
Her mace caught fire with Liora's grace, aflame in sun-gold that roared hotter than any spell.
And with a war cry that tore through the clash of steel and fang, she dashed into the slaughter to carve out a piece of the carnage for herself.
Her dash alone shattered the stone beneath her, leaving a crater in her wake.
To the knights behind, she vanished before reappearing in an instant above a troll's head.
Her one-handed mace swung just once and the entire upper half of the towering beast disintegrated in a fiery blast of blood and powdered bone as its torso toppled back.
Before even the echo had faded, she had disappeared again.
And a beat later another troll erupted in a cloud of gore, vaporized by the sheer force of her strike.
Her speed and her strength were no longer that of a mortal's but Liora's - a goddess's - and the knights screamed in awe as their morale roared sky high.
"Lady Liora is with us!" a knight of the church roared.
"Oh, Dawnmother lend us your strength!" another roared.
The knights of both orders, adventures, and the mages held their ground, watching through the breaks in their formations as their captains fought like heroes straight out of a legend.
Their morale soared even higher, a fire stoked by each monster that fell.
"For the Dawnmother! For Cardella!" the chant rolled down the ranks as shields slammed in unison, echoing like war drums as the monsters bashed their bodies at them.
"Stand fast! Stand fast!" A knight roared, shields slamming against the monsters in rhythm.
"Hold the line, brothers!" someone bellowed as his spear punched through a snarling goblin.
The captains cut down the worst of them — trolls toppled with limbs torn free, orcs split from shoulder to hip, harpies plucked from the sky, fire-gals snuffed mid-flight, and werewolves bursting open in sprays of bone and blood.
Whatever slipped past met the lines.
Shields locked and spears thrust as boots dug trenches in the dirt while every man pushed with all the strength he had left.
Each charge shoved them back steps at a time, shoulders buckling and arms shaking, but never breaking.
Inch by inch, they pushed back, forcing the monsters to recoil with roars that matched their captains before plunging their spears into the monsters.
While the adventures fought in their own style.
With their parties they spread out in the carnage, making sure the battlefield didn't spill into the entire city.
The night air stank of blood, sweat and burning flesh, lit under the moonlight mixing with the golden glow of the dome above.
And yet, in that moment, victory felt strained yet inevitable.
Then the world broke again.
-BOOOM!
A blast of fire ripped through the wall beside the first wound, stone shrieking as the gap widened fourfold, its flames hurling screaming men down the walls.
Before the dust even settled, another eruption thundered on the southern stretch of the west wall before its masonry collapsed in showers of dust.
And then again, on the northwest side of the wall, a thunderclap resounded that left nothing but ruin.
Three gaping wounds now bled into the city.
The cheers that had once shaken the walls died in their throats.
What moments before had felt like the turning of battle now cracked open into dread.
It was no longer a single breach to hold - it was a flood pouring from every direction.
Astoria's eyes widened, breath catching as the weight of it crashed down on her.
Her twin swords glowed in her grip, but even the fire and frost shimmering along their edges felt small against the flood about to pour through.
Faris stood stone-faced, but the frost steaming from his halberd bled into vapor against the heat, as his jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
For the first time, his confidence in his knights wavered.
But Serenya could not allow herself even that.
"I. WILL. NOT. FALTER!"
Fear clawed at her gut, but she drowned it beneath faith.
For even a heartbeat of hesitation, even a flicker of doubt, would be enough to break the channel.
The Church of Liora drew from an infinite well.
But the line was only as strong as Liora's grace, and the faith they held in that her.
So Serenya prayed harder.
While the walls shook with the roar of monsters charging through three broken jaws of Cardella.