Lionel's Point Of View

The daylight sky above seems to glitter red with sparks and flames that burst violently at the twisting and turning winds ripping at our bodies.

"Boulders incoming!" I hear screamed from the scouts that keep an eye on the enemy magicians in the back. Only wind magic let's him get the warning through the air.

"Secure the shields!" I bellow out among the sound of screams of both people and steel, as the enemy's weapons batter our shields without rest with battle hammers and maces. As the last enemy clears away, the enormous tower shields are bashed into the ground with force enough to make the pebbles jump, and supportive earthen walls are raised underneath to keep us from being crushed by the incoming horrors.

An eerie silence descends on us now where the enemy soldiers are gone... and with it, the sounds of our breaths and hearts become the only sound left on the battlefield... the sudden silence after the flood of noise puts you on edge... it... it is the tense state of waiting for something to happen without being able to do anything other than hope for the best...

"Double check your shields!" I yell out in the dreadful silence, hoping to shake anyone overwhelmed by fear out of it and peer to the older scruffy man next to me. Rover. His steely brown eyes gaze down into the ground. He is clutching his sword tight enough to turn his knuckles white, but doesn't budge an inch though I can see him tremble. He has a daughter waiting for him in a village only a couple of miles from here. He cannot afford to fall.

I grit my teeth and focus. If I appear afraid the men around me will sense it immediately. We must keep this line. We're the first and last line of defense, if we don't hold out then the kingdom falls.

Niles behind me lets out a forced breath to calm down, but even I can tell his breath is ragged from fear.

"Incoming!" The sound of our warning horns blast loudly. The arrival of the boulders is heard before felt, as the air whines and screeches from the masses being flung at us without a hint of mercy... a sound compared to the scream of wailing ghosts, and it sends a chill down my spine to remember the view of those who got crushed in the past. The last thought I have is 'wherever it hits, be safe'.

Then it hits us like lightning.

The earth quakes violently under our feet as the first man-sized boulder smashes into the ground with a deafening impact. The dust and pebbles fly into the air and turns everything into a shaking, dusty fog, but even then I can still see the trails of boulders whirling through the dust and down onto the shields of my men, and I can only pray that they still stand when the dust falls. This is the best response we found after having tried to redirect the boulders multiple times, only to have the boulders explode above us and hit us anyway. Furthermore, we use the boulders for defense once they've landed, but till then, we defend.

The Headal commanders know this, but they don't care about giving us a height or material advantage... they aim to exhaust us physically and mentally. They aim to drive us mad with the sound, and the fear that if we mess up we die. There is no coming back from being crushed by boulders larger than a man.The last crash sounds together with the voice of our scout.

"Boulders exhausted! Enemies incoming!" I get up in an instant and pull the tower shield with me. My legs are still weak from the trembling ground, but we have no time to rest.

"Rise! Prepare for impact!"

I hardly finish my sentence before a massive weight lands on my tower shield, and the spike of a war hammer descends on me with merciless speed and aggressiveness. I grit my teeth and curse their aggressive behavior. Of course they give us no semblance of rest, but this time is worse than usual. The sounds of war flood back, as if the silence from before had merely been an illusion.

In an instant, the man behind me rises a wall under the man's feet to send him tumbling into our ranks, where he falls helplessly to the ground, and find his life ended as a burst of flames roar towards us and towards the sky, effectively setting the remnants of my mantle ablaze. I unclasp the mantle and look to the man behind me while using the opportunity to regroup.

"Thank you, what happened?" I ask the man behind me while the stone wall in front of me quivers. He wasn't supposed to use magic to interfere with this part, but he nods towards a small bird flying directly at me... no... it looks like a wind fairy. The wall was placed to let me deal with the fairy, which simply lands on my shoulder with no care in the words and tell me the following:

"Prepare for impact."

It's a message, and the voice sounds exactly like Lily's... the water mage's. The fairy... disintegrates... without warning, but before I can give any orders, another report sounds from our scouts.

"Bill Hook units incoming!"

I grit my teeth at the horror that is about to arrive before we can get back into a good rhythm.

"Prepare for Bill Hooks! Swords ready!" I bellow out while our own ranks begin to move. I turn my attention back to the crumbling wall in front of me and take another breath.

The Bill Hooks are likely the worst enemy for a shield wall if the other side is in a shield wall as well. A spear and shield line with a Bill Hook line right behind them. They'll rip down our shields and stab us as our defenses are forced down, and thinking of that I glance to Rover.

"Prepare earth armor!" I hear from the background and take a breath of relief. The wall in front of me stops shaking for a moment, and then gets blasted apart violently, sending rock shards in all directions and filling the air with dust. I catch the worst of it with the shield and start mentally preparing for what is ahead... chaos, and a need to kill a whole bunch of men within a short time...

I just barely raise the shield in time to prevent getting stabbed in the head with a spear from the enemy that blasted the wall apart. He's out of range for me, but looks hesitant. They're testing out ways to win again.

When I lower the shield enough to look over, I see them take formation. They've yet to find a definitive way to defeat us, so they're trying out new tactics every day. For now, their best chances are shields and warhammers, but I've no intention of letting them know.

Behind the spearmen, the Bill Hooks, spears with a curl on it on the bottom side of it, rise into the air... and now a wall of spiking spears stand in front of us. My body feels restless... tense and uncomfortable with what we are about to do, but it's a chance for us to take a brief offensive to lessen their numbers.

Pairs of Bill Hooks appear on our side as well... Some people get their shoulders patted, and in that instant they know of the risk they have been requested to take... but none says no, and instead accept their fate. They pat another person on the shoulder. Someone to stay by their side during it. Someone to have their back... these are the ones about to risk their lives, which, in the end is merely a kill before you're killed sort of situation.

I look back to the spear wall and remember the words. Did she know about this before we did?

I look to Rover, and he nods to me in return. When I charge in, he will be at my side.

"Prepare for impact!" I yell out among the noise and let Rover carry the sound of my voice to the rest of the unit...

And it goes down in an instant once more.

The Bill Hooks lower and with a jab try to reach their hook to the edge of our shields. There is but one catch... our pairs of Bill Hooks do the same... and as they do, three knights for every pair rush in between the forcefully lowered shields, while the boulders from before wrap around their armor and on their shield like a blanket of stone, making them look like well rounded golems charging into the opponent ranks. The spears bounce off the shields or the stone armor, and the rest of us summon earthen armor as well once their spear wall starts trying to deal with them, trapping them like lice.

Earth Armor is the special technique of House Tepet Knights that we pass on to the most loyal and brave of the knights, and it is used for situations as this where the frontmost lines degrade into one on one battles. It doesn't last very long, but just exactly long enough to get rid of the billhooks, our primary target. The armor is cast continuously and has no openings near on the body, and prevents most weapons from doing any harm. Knives too are rendered useless.

Thankfully for us, billhooks are a soft target when not hidden behind their shield wall, and the knights dash in through the holes in their wall and for a brief moment, the area between the new front ranks of shield walls become a massacre as we take down every billhook we can and destroy their spears.

Then the enemy we detest the most appears from their next shield line. Shield and hammers, sharpened to puncture through earth and armor alike. We need to retreat back into the formation. Now.

I locate Rover by my side and call out just as a blast echoes through the pass like the roar of a dragon... coming from above...

I cast a glance up, and so does the enemy... for what I see, is nothing like what I could ever have expected to happen. Seemingly never ending amounts of water blast out from the top of the mountain, like... no, there's more than I have ever seen from both avalanches and landslides alike... and it covers the enemy troops in shadow. A shadow of death approaching like thunder.

Our battle slows down just to watch as the Headal troops use every magic they can to avoid being blasted away by the flood from above... and that is when the flood turns to solid ice in but an instant, and a deafening roar echoes through the pass as blue silver figures charge out onto this frozen wave with the speed of a pack of wolves. The Celeste reinforcements have arrived.

"Regroup!"

I scream out on top of my lungs and pull Rover back as fast as we can move while slowed down by rocks. Her warning wasn't about the billhooks at all. The maniac intended to pay the enemy back for their boulders with a bloody glacier!