“A B-level Sprite with two thousand real fights? And a clutch of spear-tip thieves dares hand us that lofty praise like weeds crowning a stump?”

“It’s fine. Our city fields fifteen thousand trained D-level Sprites, a wall of trunks in a gale. Five thousand C-level, a mid-mountain ridgeline. Excluding Medith’s unit, we still have over four hundred B-level, a pack of iron wolves. Fifty A-level, like peaks with snow-caps. Four Holy Elves, four moons above the ridge. Plus the Elders Council and Her Majesty the Queen, two pillars like ancient cedars.”

“And we have the ward, a glass lake over the city that cost centuries of mana. Without S+ mana slamming like thunder, no one gets in, like rain off oiled leaves. They don’t even know the Collapse Point exists, a hidden seam in stone.”

“Didn’t you hear? The Collapse Point in the Glimmering Green Forest is already gone, like a root hacked from the earth!”

“So what? That was a B-level phantasm ward, smoke over a pond. The main city’s a war-ward, iron over bedrock, not even the same sky.”

“Convey my orders!” The Queen seized her Scepter and cracked it down like lightning on a cliff. “All forces under the Elders Council, move. All A-level Sprites, move. Every elite B-level, move, and all obey Medith Waheit like geese flying under one moon.

“Leave five thousand D-level Sprites to manage evacuation, like shepherds along a floodbank.

“Use the disengagement ward to pull out the little Sprites, the women, and the elders first, like sparrows tucked behind a screen. Then the nobles. Finally everyone else. Be ready to abandon the city, like a boat cut from its moor; take nothing if you can, travel light as wind.

“After transfer by ward, head for Talia City at once, like arrows loosed at dusk. Ask for shelter. Remember—go to Talia City first thing, and don’t look back at us. Combatants protect noncombatants with your bodies like shields.

“If the walls fall, withdraw to the Seers’ Quarter, our last line like a lantern at midnight. If we, too, are cut down, you follow the plan and scatter like seeds on the wind.

“Move. Now.”

“Your Majesty?!” The council Sprites gaped like fish lifted from water. “Abandon the city? Are we weaker than a gang of Mountain Bandits scurrying like rats in scrub?”

“Her Majesty didn’t say we’re weaker, only that we hedge against the storm, like tying down a tent before the squall.”

“If we all pull out, what happens to Her Majesty, the lone lamp in the dark?”

“Move, now!” The Scepter struck again, the sound like a bell over ice, and the nobles clenched their teeth and went like stones pushed by a tide.

Euticles shut his eyes in pain, lids dropping like a dusk curtain. A breath later, killing intent flared, sharp as frost on a blade. “You two little ones, lead us over like guides on a mountain path. This time, the old man will pin these hill-bred pests outside the walls, nail their shadows to the dust.” Euticles spoke like a drum.

Iling and Milia watched the three Elders’ backs fade like cranes in mist and understood a piece of it. “Yes!”

“You’re their leader?” Medith stood on the wall like a spearpoint and looked down at the lion-headed man.

“I am. Nessos,” he said, his voice low as stones rolling in a ravine. “A small respect for a worthy foe. Few women earn my admiration in this world. Most admire me.”

Medith laughed, a flake of ice on the wind. “Admiration? I don’t need a man like you to admire me. Withdraw. If you don’t want to die, fade like fog. There’s a city ward, a gate of iron, and I command heavy Sprite troops like thunderheads. You don’t win here. I’ll give you one chance.”

A strategist’s voice drifted from afar, thin as reed-song. “If we traded places, would you say ‘withdraw’? If I were you and could erase an enemy, I wouldn’t say ‘withdraw.’ I’d strike like lightning without a second word. General, am I wrong?”

Medith hunted that voice like a hawk sighting a vole. Her palm pressed the wall, and stone groaned as cracks spread like dry riverbeds.

“In that case, I won’t let you rally,” Nessos roared, a lion over drums. “Assault!”

“Awwooooo!” The Mountain Bandits’ morale surged like fire up dry grass.

“Thrum—thrum—!” Silver crossbows flashed out—five hundred gleams like fish-scales. Several wagons rolled forward, piled with Wind-Cleaving Arrows, a hedgehog of iron. A thousand bandits gripped spears and hammered the ward like hail on a rice-paper window.

“Whoosh!” Countless Wind-Cleaving Arrows and spears hit the ward like a black rain. They froze midair, stuck as if set in amber outside the boundary, then fell like shed leaves when their force bled away.

At the same time, Medith led the counter like a winter squall. “Archers ready—loose!”

“Chong-chong-chong!” Hundreds of arrows, buffed with Wind Magic, slipped through the ward like swallows and flew at the bandits. The bandits lifted heavy shields and threw spears to intercept, wave breaking on wave. They held for a breath. Then the Sprites’ volleys came like surf, faster and faster, and bodies began to drop like wheat.

“Strategist!” Nessos shouted, a horn note over dust.

The strategist nodded, a reed bending to wind, and tossed him a round little ball, a moon cut from silver. Nessos caught it. His body coiled like a pitcher on the mound, arm-cords bulging like braided rope, and he broke from the rear like a comet.

Danger stabbed Medith’s gut like cold iron. “Now—focus fire on Nessos!”

The Sprites switched targets at once, bows turning like a field of sunflowers. Medith snatched a longbow, drew to the cheek, and held still as a drawn breath. Two counts. She loosed an arrow with a gale snarling at its head.

The shaft spun, a top carving air, and a Cyclone rose like a coiling river. Wind knotted at the arrowhead and shaped a dragon’s head, teeth of storm. “Aoooo—” Even the air hummed with a dragon’s distant roar.

At once, Nessos twisted his wrist, a snake flicking, and hurled the silver ball.

The silver blurred into a white meteor, a tear of dawn. It smashed Medith’s dragon-head arrow like porcelain and trailed a white glare like a falling star. Arrows aimed at it powdered on contact like moth-wings in flame. The silver slammed the ward like a hammer on a bell.

“Dziiing—” The note was strange, a glass chime in a cave. The ethereal halo-ward blinked out like a candle, and the warped air in the sky smoothed like a pond at dusk.

“—!” Medith and her line felt their souls lurch like boats in a squall. These humans’ gear was absurd, like iron born from thunder. They even had a way to shatter a ward.

“Commander Medith! We’re sorry we’re late!” The gathered war-strength finally arrived, boots drumming like rain. The bell had rung, the muster called, and they had raced within half an hour, a sprint through smoke—only to find this scene like a cliff face looming.

“Report numbers,” Medith snapped, her voice a whip of ice before a storm.

“Reporting, Commander! Four hundred B-level Sprites present, like pines in a row. Forty-nine A-level Sprites present, like torches in fog. The remaining ten thousand D-level and five thousand C-level are en route, a river of steel.”

“Why did the ward vanish, like mist in sun?”

“Humans can break even the Queen’s ward, a sky ripped open?!”

“If even Her Majesty’s ward can’t hold, how do we win, like ants against a flood…?”

“Don’t panic,” Medith said, and her longsword sang out of the scabbard like ice breaking. “The ward is gone; we are the ward. Shut it.”

Silence fell like snow, and the Sprites froze, not daring to twitch.

“No ward? Then we become the ward, stone in the gap. No gate? We are the gate, iron in the arch. Humans stand at our doorstep like wolves at the fence—what do we do?”

“Drive them off, like smoke!”

“Hit them hard, like thunder!”

“Wrong.” Medith’s shout cracked like a stormbolt. “We kill them all. If you don’t step with that heart against these death-seekers, we die, no matter our count, like lanterns in a gale.

“Burn your lives like oil. Drain your mana like a dry well. Kill every enemy before you like reaping a field. Defend our home like mountains.

“Our will endures for ages like stone. May the world know no slaughter, like spring after frost.”

“Oooooh!” The roar rose like a wildfire.

“War—war—war—” The chant rolled like drums, and the panic from the shattered ward flipped in a breath, a tide turning under moonlight.