The Enemy Breaks Free

A blaring horn shook Elias from his half-dream. Judging by the light, not much time had passed.

He rose unsteadily and looked toward the valley. At that very moment, another army –also from the Frostshore Wilds– struck the Shade host from behind. A brutal melee erupted outside the walls he himself had raised earlier. Chaos rippled through the shade ranks, panic seizing those caught within the maze.

Elias’s heart leapt. For a moment, it seemed the tide was turning.

Then, from behind one of the drifting clouds above, he saw them – two dragons locked together, tumbling like knotted serpents toward the earth.

“Bard!”

They struck the Turning Tower with catastrophic force. Most of the structure collapsed under the blow – though a portion still stood.

♦♦♦

As Red watched, stunned, as the black dragon shattered against this, surprisingly, identical second Turning Tower, she couldn't believe her luck. And seeing the walls hemming in the shade’s advance… “the Warden must have made them after we crossed the valley,” she thought, recalling their march to Frostshore barely two days ago.

She seized the warhammer she had borrowed from Orrendale and charged forward, plunging into the front lines. Around her surged the strange army the Warden had placed under her command.

The sounds were everywhere – stones clashing, timbers splintering under pressure, the raw tang of earth and oak filling the air.

Smashing through a handful of Shades and clearing a path for her soldiers, she reached the ruins at the tower’s base. Memory surged – that night at Tarlmere, when she thought she’d die, when so many friends and fellow guards had fallen.

“For Tarlmere!” she cried, and brought her hammer down with all her strength on the dragon’s motionless head – though it was long dead.

Not so the shade leader standing a few strides ahead, curved blade in hand, framed between two long walls. Behind him stretched a swath of their army, pressing forward, eager to spill into the battle that raged around her.

Her troops were fierce, but they were vastly outnumbered.

Then, slowly descending from the sky, came a man with a harmonica at his lips. He hung from something like a small, music-note-shaped blimp, playing a rough yet oddly pleasant tune.

His hair was straw-colored. Blood ran from a fresh scar that slashed from brow to cheek, stinging his eye shut. The other eye – startlingly – was blue, shading almost toward violet.

“Who are you?” she asked when his boots touched earth. His note fade away.

“Bard – at your service.” He dipped his head with a crooked smile.

Behind him, the shade gave a signal. A tide of enemies surged forward, weapons raised.

“Oh, of course… Vorath wouldn’t go down that easily, now would he?”

But then, a new narrow wall – taller than the others – closed them in. Red looked baffled by it as they kept fighting the shades on their side of the wall.

Elias had followed the path that wound down closer to the valley, near the Katon Mounts, slowly descending toward the ruined tower. He feared he might find Bard crushed in the rubble, but – there he was, standing tall, perfectly alive. And beside him stood… it could be no other!
“Red!” he shouted.

She didn’t hear him at first in the rage of battle, but at last her eyes fell on him. “Elias,” she whispered.

He came closer still. “Red!” he called again.

“You’re alive!” she cried with sudden joy.
“Where’s Fawks?” she frowned.

“He’s fine!” he assured her, edging closer step by step. It was starting to get late in the afternoon.

On their side of the fight, the Warden’s army had the upper hand. But where Vorath was trapped with his forces, some of the walls were beginning to crumble and fall. The same happened further down in the maze. The pounding from within was relentless, and Elias no longer had the strength to sustain everything. In truth, from the start he had abandoned the miles of walls he had raised to their own fate – and until now they had held surprisingly well.

“I’m so glad you’re safe!” Elias said, joy breaking through him, and Red shared his relief. They exchanged a glance for a second. Her eyes softened for a heartbeat, remembering how she had thought Elias and Fawks surely perished after they left Tarlmere, when the shades had come from the very direction they had gone.

“I’m fine! It’s only a scratch!” Bard cut in, breaking the tension. Whether Bard new Elias meant his words for Red or not was uncertain, but the truth was that Elias also rejoiced to see him alive – since he thought he’d seen him fall to his death.

“You need to regroup your forces in one place,” Bard urged, “because once that horde breaks free, it’s going to come crashing down on us!”

But instead, after a few shrill commands from Vorath and his captains, those shades who fought Red’s troops on this side slowly pressed back against the walls, forming a barrier of their own. Meanwhile, all the shades that had already entered the long corridor or the labyrinth began to spill out – first in disorder, but gradually finding their ranks as they went.

“They don’t care about us – they’re going for the city!” Elias cried out.
“I don’t have the strength to hold them anymore…”

“We need to break to the other side!” Red shouted. “Everyone, to me!” She raised her hammer high, then charged straight into the shade center.