To the Skies, Tedori!

Once more, I took to the skies on the pegasus that I borrowed from the royal menagerie. While the demons still had us vastly outnumbered, we now had the aerial advantage, thanks in large part to Tedori. Demons liked to attack in large clusters, so whenever one was spotted, we went in for the swift attack.

I needed to scout what remained of the city for other survivors, and with full haste at that. Giorg was first, struggling to fight his way out of the granaries with a sword in one hand and a war hammer in the other. Even from this distance, visible scorch marks dotted his armor, one ogre against thirty or more demons. Each time he would swat one or more of them away, several more would swarm around him. But that was the least of his concerns.

While Giorg was distracted with the demons, a Lago warrior snuck up behind him with a sword. I wasted no time making my way over to him. At the last possible moment, I leapt off the pegasus and threw myself between Giorg and the Lago, knocking away the latter's sword. I attempted to drive my own sword through him, but he vanished, leaving only a puddle in his place.

“Halliyah?” Giorg asked. “Thank all the gods it's you.”

“I'm just glad I found you first,” I answered. “Something is rotten in the city of Freehold, and it's not the smell of burnt corpses.”

“There's too many of them,” Giorg told me. “I've probably killed a couple hundred of the buggers by myself, and they just keep coming.”

“Where are the archers?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Giorg answered. “After that dragon blew up the east wall, everyone became scattered and disorganized.”

“The center is relatively unharmed,” I replied, pointing the way. “You need to head that way and regroup. Find every soldier you can and tell them to meet up at the ziggurat.” The group of soldiers I rescued earlier arrived on scene just in time to hear my instructions. “That goes for you, as well.”

Giorg asked, “Where are you going?”

“I have an idea.”

“You always do,” he replied with a belly laugh. “Just make sure you come back in one piece.”

“I will try.”

We moved to go our separate ways, but Giorg shouted, “Oi!”

I turned around. “What is it?”

“It's good to have you back,” he told me.

•

Soon, it was back to the skies for me. The pegasus gave me the ability to travel from one end of the city to the other much faster than I would have on foot. We circled the ruins of Freehold for a while, giving Giorg plenty of opportunity to find more survivors. I told Tedori, “When I give the command, I need you to neigh as loud as you can, okay?”

Tedori simply snorted back at me.

“Understood, but I really need you to do this,” I replied. “It's the only way we can defeat the demon hordes.”

The pegasus sighed. It was dangerous, but we both knew it had to be done. If we failed, the whole city would fall. But if we succeeded, we could defeat the demons in one fell swoop.

“Alright, on the count of three,” I told Tedori. “One! Two! Three!”

As I said “Three!”, we flew past the rubble of the east wall. Tedori turned around and blasted the loudest sound he could make, a neigh so mighty it shook the rubble, or what I could see of it, beneath us and caused Tedori's wings to give off a faint glow. We just placed a massive target on ourselves. Now all that remained was to see if the demons would take the bait. For good measure, Tedori neighed once more.

One by one, demons began to emerge from the rubble to meet us, slowly at first, but increasing in confidence and speed as more of their comrades joined in. I landed Tedori on the rubble of the east wall. The midday light shone down upon us, blasting at all with its intense heat. I recalled reading about a special attack that pegasi could do, but had never seen one pull off. That was why I landed on solid-ish ground. Doing this attack while in the air would have been too dangerous for both of us.

“Are you ready?” I asked Tedori.

The pegasus shook its head in response.

“Feather Shot!” I gave the command and one by one, Tedori shot out its own wing feathers at the demon hordes. Just as I had read in the scrolls, a pegasus in dire straits could shed its own feathers and use them as an attack. While it rendered the pegasus unable to fly until its feathers grew back, the attack was effective if utilized properly. The demons were defenseless against the attack of such a blessed creature.

From the center of the city, the sound of horns blared out. Emerging from the ziggurat were Giorg and any surviving soldiers he could muster. By my guess, he had probably gathered about seven hundred of them. The demons attempted to flee the rain of holy feathers, but it was already too late for them. The sight of our forces going on the offensive must have sparked something in the other survivors. Coming in behind that initial group were clusters of other soldiers and even some civilians, armed with whatever weapons they could scrounge up, a few dozen at a time. A few individuals I could spot amongst the growing crowd, with Giorg obviously leading the way. Hilami and Ipas were charging up whatever mana they could muster. King Edagri led a force of about a hundred elves. Queen Rini brought out a ragtag group of Islanders to aid in the assault.

The demons were now caught between two walls: the wall of rubble and the wall of warriors. Even though Tedori had run out of feathers by now, the demons were powerless to stop the oncoming storm of people rushing in behind them. Some attempted to climb up the wall of rubble they created, but most were stopped by either Tedori's elemental attacks or my blade. The ones who escaped, few though they were, just kept running towards the horizon. The battle ended shortly thereafter.

•

Next, much like with the battle at Andawas, came the arduous task of cleaning up the wreckage and looking for survivors. Giorg ran through the numbers: out of the massive force of twenty thousand demons, perhaps only a few hundred escaped the city, out of the nine thousand or so defenders, only three thousand could be accounted for. Many were still missing. Countless civilians were lost in the destruction of the east wall. Two-thirds of the city itself burned, with about half of that reduced to rubble in the battle. We had won, but only at a tremendous cost.

No sooner than I had returned Tedori to his stable inside the royal menagerie, I was met by one of the Ogre Stewards. He promptly and without warning threw shackles onto my hands.

“You are under arrest,” the Steward told me.

“For what crimes? I asked him.

“For what crimes?” the Steward mocked me as he tried to carry me off. “You stole a pegasus!”

“Yeah, I did,” I admitted. “But because of that, I saved the city.”

“You stole a pegasus!”

“I stole a pegasus and I saved the city.”

“And the poor thing lost its feathers because of you! That's animal cruelty!” The Steward was quite strong, just like most ogres. Some people were still looking for any reason to not trust me. But as he carried me off, Ipas intervened.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ipas asked the Steward.

“This criminal stole a royal pegasus and made it lose its ability to fly,” the Steward explained. “I caught him red-handed returning the poor thing to its stable.”

“Ah yes,” Ipas scolded the Steward. “Because if he hadn't, we would all be lunch for the vultures right now. Shame on you for punishing this man's foresight. But if you must arrest him, you must arrest me as well.”

“Ipas, no,” I tried to stop her. The signs were in her eyes, full of fire and light. She had become loyal, first nature for Lykosi, treated as a crime for seers.

The other two Stewards arrived on scene as well.

“Let the man go,” the left Steward told the arresting Steward in the ogre tongue. “The feathers of a pegasus are but a small price to pay for his heroism.”

The arrester begrudgingly released me from my shackles, allowing me to go on my way. Without warning, I felt a massive pain shoot up from my ankles to the top of my head and back down. The heat of battle had gotten a hold of me and was not about to let go. I tried to fight against the sudden urge to pass out.

But then, nothing.