Chapter 18: Na'hram Pass

Morning, Na'hram Pass.

This is the only land mass that connects the now wasteland desert, with the continent of Carola.
On the north side, lies a fortified military base that belonged to the United Carola Republic, which is now a destroyed nation. This is likely one of the very few surviving human constructions. Everything else vanished after the nuclear apocalypse. This place features state of the art weapons and defence systems, which could only continue running for so long, until the reserve fuels run out.
A wall was constructed on the pass connecting the two continents, and behind it was the main defensive building. It was made of mainly concrete, steel, and aluminum, everything painted a shade of dark gray. Many turrets of various uses could be found on the roof of this facility, on the ground, and coming out of the walls. On the sides of this main construction were two similar looking edifices, which also featured futuristic looking heavy weaponry.
Behind all this fortification, were the barracks and any other buildings necessary to house a battalion of soldiers.

Right now, a serviceman could be seen inside a protruding structure, operating one of the base's many anti air turrets.
"Ammo!" He shouted at his comrades, as if he was fighting for his life. He probably was.
This massive weapon had a short, fast rotating turret in its front that shot out many air-detonating rounds in incredibly quick bursts. 
These bursts were aimed at none other than a group of reckless Wizard Wanderers who sought to take out the turret in question. They had advanced far beyond the rest of their team mates with this only goal in mind.
As the wizards were flying through the air, in an instant, they were consumed by many clouds of smoke and explosions. Work of the anti air turret.

"On it!" After the turret operator thought he had eliminated these invaders, he had asked for an ammunition refill, and his comrades responded instantly.
To his unfortunate luck though, the group of wizards could be seen flying out of the remaining smoke clouds, with many sparks in their hands. They were about to launch spells.
"Faster, dammit! They're getting clos-"
The turret went up in blue-colored flames. The result of a spell barrage. The ammo loaders were able to make it out alive, but the same could not be said for the poor soul that was now burning in agony inside the turret.
"Let's go help the other crews, quick!" One of the ammo loaders rapidly accepted the situation.
"Hold on!" While the other rushed over the the closed and burning entrance of the turret.
"Come here, Tomas! He's gone now. All we can do is help the others!" 
"But-"
A blue fireball hit very close to them, barely missing the one that was trying to save his likely dead ally.
"We need to go, now!"

How did this situation occur?

***

Two hours before the fight broke out, outside of the wizard base.

A small company of flying soldiers were harassing the wizards who kept watch, outside the civilian bunker they had overtaken and were using as a base of operations.
This was a common strategy used by the remaining military against mages. The soldiers had a range advantage, but the wizard's abilities were way to unpredictable, and they often won in close range encounters.
The soldiers' tactic included trying to pick off the wizards guarding their base from afar, and then forcing their comrades to come out and chase them, until they got in range of the military base's anti air defences. This has been working for a while but the wizards have probably hatched a plan by now to counter this.

"They're not coming at us."
"Maybe they've learned their lesson?"
"I don't care what they've learned. We'll eventually drop all of them, and after that we can safely search and evacuate this area."
A group of soldiers was chatting while sniping off any potential wizard targets with their futuristic looking rifles. Then;

Bbbzzbzzb

"My jetpack!" The soldiers started falling to the ground, due to a malfunction in their suits they thought. But they quickly realized what was going on.
"Eve--one, s...wt.~c~~  e p-op...uon sy-ms to manual! The-- ar... jamming us!"
The soldiers landed on top of the scorching sand, and immediately after that, some weird masses started to rise from the sand they were standing on. They were...
"Skeletons?!?"
"Manual worked for me, make sure to switch to reserve fuel an turn off automatic communication rendering, we don't know what they are doing to our suits."

The servicemen started instinctively blasting the rising skeletons with their laser rifles, when they witnessed a large team of mages gathering above them.
"Go back to base, now! Now!"
After tinkering with their suits for a bit and fending off against the monstrosities that were emerging from the ground, our brave fighters eventually were able to take off and start heading back to the safety of their fort.

The way back was not a trivial task however. Spheres made of fire, stone, ice, and other unkown peculiar elements were trying to hit the soldiers who were trying to get back to base.
"The trophy systems aren't working?!"
"Neither are the flares, just dodge!"  
"This is other-wordly technology we're dealing with! Don't expect our systems to pick up on that!"
Not everyone could make it out alive of this deadly aerial chase, soldiers suddenly heard the sound of their comrades being blown to pieces, their agonizing screams, and other terrible sensations.

But eventually, the servicemen made it within range of their base's turrets. A fleeting sense of security and relief could be felt among them, but that quickly vanished as soon as they realized the wizards were still following them, throwing spells, and...
"Hey, Mark! How many of them are there?"
"Holy shit..."
An entire battalion of wizards was chasing them. This was a full on assault. This was their plan.
They decided that they had to uplift the root of the problem. If they didn't do that, the wizards would inevitably lose to a war of attrition, and they couldn't let that happen.

After just seconds of the wizards arriving, all hell broke loose.
From one side, huge, man-made, futuristic turrets could be seen fire what looked to be pure fire, flying at incredible speed and causing deadly clusters of explosions everywhere they landed. Soldiers all over the base with peculiar, over engineered but perfectly functional weaponry, firing pure energy, explosives, and some of them even bullets still. Resources were getting scarce and they had to use what they had.
On the other, it was complete chaos, no coherency. Multiple wizards were flying in the air, launching fireballs of various colors, stone spikes, icicles, on the ground there were cultists drawing menacing shapes made of dark-red energy with their fingertips. No one could know the results of these dark drawings, but one thing is for sure, they were going to be the cause of a single or multiple dead soldiers. Mages with huge staffs, some made from wood, some made from stone, some of them had gems on them, some of them had skulls on top, they were all casting different kinds of spells to achieve the same goal. All of them wore different outfits, the only cohesion in their clothing were the weird painted on symbols they had all painted on their hoods, helmets, or faces.

This was a fierce battle that would go on for quite a long time.