An enemy lunged at me from the right, spear thrusting towards my head. In the same instant, a ball of flame exploded at my left, throwing a mix of soldiers our way. The impact knocked me from my feet, metal armour to the side of the skull making my vision shaky. I glimpsed the same spearman still coming my way, and I leaned backward, avoiding the weapon that I couldn’t quite focus on.

  I opened a portal on the ground beneath me, and I fell through it. In mid-air, I turned, trying to blink my vision back into focus. Failing that, I activated knifestorm, as the subsequent flurry of blows didn’t need to be well-aimed. As the enemy died, I fell into him, and once again suffered a blow from impacting against heavy armour.

  My foot slipped through the mud as I tried to bring myself back to my feet, and a hand caught my elbow. My vision was coming back, but not fully, though I didn’t need perfect vision to recognise the long locks of my elven friend.

  ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Corminar said.

  ‘How’s it looking?’ I asked him. ‘Are we winning?’

  ‘You have heard all that I have,’ he replied, nodding to his assigned portal relay and then shifting to loose an arrow.

  I noticed his quiver was quickly growing empty, and a ranger without arrows wasn’t much of a ranger at all. I opened up my pocket world and pulled a load more arrows from it; we’d kept some there just for this occasion. ‘In case we get separated again!’ I shouted.

  Our ranks were going tight, some force pressing on our left and our right. I could only hope that the enemy wasn’t flanking us; if they were, we were in deep, deep trouble. It was all I could do to avoid treading on my ally’s feet, and those around me with larger weapons were having trouble manoeuvring them.

  ‘Does anyone have eyes on our flanks?’ I asked. ‘Are we surrounded?’

  ‘Not yet!’ Lore shouted back through his relay. ‘We’re working on it, over here.’

  ‘Same in west flank,’ Arzak grunted her reply. ‘Try push enemies back, but they winning.’

  More enemies set their eyes on me, so I shifted to focusing on keeping myself alive. ‘Keep us updated!’ I shouted back to my friends on the flanks as I threw a knife at an encroaching magick user. I didn’t call attention to the changing tide of battle; the other commanders would be aware of it, and it wouldn’t help morale much to say it out loud. We needed to change the way this battle was going, and soon. But how could we, when the truth of the matter was simply that we were outnumbered?

  Soldiers rammed me from behind. I turned and was about to launch into an attack when I recognised the familiar uniform of Lenktra. I didn’t know whether this was a military strategy or simply happenstance, but us being pushed so close together was severely limiting our ability to fight back. We needed to regain some space. We needed a weapon.

  That’s when I saw Reginald.

  He wasn’t far away, separated only by four or five rows of our crowded soldiers, and his giant furry frame loomed over the rest of us. If he’d been at his most terrifying, the enemies would naturally give him space, but as it was, he was… timid. At least, for a bear.

  ‘Corminar!’ I shouted.

  The elf whipped his head around to see me nodding to the bear. Corminar followed my line of sight, and then nodded; we’d worked together long enough that he knew roughly what I had planned.

  I opened two portals, one in front of me and the other in front of Corminar. Before I’d even created them, the elf was leaping. We appeared out the portals’ partners above the fray near Reginald. While Corminar was able to nimbly fall down between our allies, I landed on top of one. I grimaced an apology at her then helped her back up again. She was hit by an arrow a moment later.

  ‘Oh, gods,’ I muttered, and threw a health potion the Tundran soldier’s way. Only when I saw that she’d caught it with her good arm did I turn away and face down Reginald, who was swiping clumsily at the enemies with a sword that was too small for him. We didn’t need this Reginald. We needed the bear.

  ‘Corminar, cover us!’ I shouted.

  As the elf blasted the nearby enemies with arrows, occupying them if not defeating them, I borrowed his relay. With the flick of my wrist, it drifted from Corminar’s orbit and instead covered over the cowering enemies. I stood next to Reginald with a relay of my own.

  ‘Hello, husband of Equivalence,’ Reginald said, his voice strained with the effort of wielding his weapon. ‘War is not much like it is in the poems, is it?’

  But I wasn’t here to talk. ‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘Listen to the relay, to what the enemies are saying about you.’

  The furry bard paused for a moment, and for once I had good fortune; at that particular moment, someone near the borrowed relay ordered his fellow Goldmarch soldiers to, ‘Attack the bear!’

  Reginald frowned. ‘Who do you think they’re referring to?’

  ‘I think you know the answer. They’re calling you “bear”, Reginald.’

  The cursed bear was timid no longer. Fury welled up in his eyes, his bared his teeth, and he roared. Even before he could launch into animalistic mauling and clawing, the enemy were falling back. We got the space we needed. We were able to breathe.

  ‘Good thinking,’ Corminar said as he watched the portal relay drift back into his orbit.

  ‘Keep up the pressure!’ I shouted, this time not through the relays but to those around me wearing the armour of Tundran cities. ‘We’re pushing through! Keep up the pressure!’

  But though this was a win, I knew it was a local victory. Reginald’s monstrous influence would only impact the nearby area; those further away will still be being crowded by the enemy. The breathing room we now had wasn’t reflective of the battle as a whole.

  ‘Arzak? Lore? Any update?’ I asked.

  My orcish friend replied first, and I thought I could hear the sound of Lore deep in combat through the relay. ‘We losing people slower than enemy, but not slow enough.’

  ‘If it continues as-is,’ Zoi added, ‘then the enemy win this battle. There are too many of them. We need a new plan.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I told her, but neither Zoi nor Arzak had anything to say on the subject; either they were occupied, or they—like me—were fresh out of ideas. ‘Everyone,’ I reiterated to all those with a relay, ‘I’m all ears. What do we have? What can we do to shift the battle?’

  No reply was forthcoming.

  ‘Yua? Turell? What about you? What’s happening in the city?’

  ‘We are at the gate,’ the governor of Lenktra replied, her voice strained. ‘Full report to follow.’

  ‘Turell?’ I prompted the minor lord. ‘Turell, what about you?’

  Still, there was nothing.

  ‘Turell?’

  A new voice came through the relays. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes? What is it?’ I asked, though deep down, I already knew. I knew he was gone.

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  ‘It’s Turell, he…’ The man couldn’t seem to bear to say it. Was he a friend, or a countryman of Turell’s? Was that why the lord had picked him? I didn’t force the man to spell it out for me.

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’ There it was: another friend lost. Not that he’d been a friend, not really. I’d never had the chance to properly get to know him, I’d only used him, given him orders, counted upon his capable nature. What did I know about him, really? I didn’t even know if he was leaving any family behind. But there was no time to wonder. Not now. I turned my attention back to the soldier by the relay. ‘You. What’s your name?’

  ‘Wylm, sir.’

  ‘Touch the portal relay, Wylm. You’ve got command of your unit now. Get that gate open; the world is in your hands.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ It was quite the responsibility that I’d just given him, yet this stranger was stepping up. It might cost him his life, too.

  I thought that maybe I should open another portal, this time straight to the gate. It didn’t matter, now, how many soldiers we got through the portal before being discovered; the enemy forces already knew we were in the city. I could open a portal right by the gate itself, if I needed to.

  ‘Our unit is joining him as we speak, Slayer,’ Yua said. ‘If we need further assistance, I will let you know.’

  The governor put my mind at ease with this; I could focus on the battle, here, and keeping as many as my allies alive as possible. I would not let any of my friends suffer the same fate as Turell, though maybe that would turn out to be out of my hands.

  ‘Val?’ I asked, my voice quiet, my voice ever so slightly shaky.

  ‘Still alive, idiot,’ came the reply. The tone reassured me; she wouldn’t have called me an idiot if she was in trouble. I had a feeling she knew that.

  I addressed the commanders once more. ‘Can we regain formation? Would that help slow our losses?’

  ‘It is too late,’ Geron’s voice replied. ‘Our forces are scattered amongst the Goldmarch forces. To order us back into formation might just give the opportunity they need to rout us.’

  A blade came out of nowhere and nicked me on the shoulder. I threw my main dagger into the enemy swordsman’s chest, then portalled over behind him. There, I reached around and yanked the blade free before shoving them forward. As the soldier fell, I caught side of my hands, and saw just how much blood had soaked into my skin.

  ‘Yua?’ I asked. ‘What’s the progress like on the gate?’

  ‘There are more forces than we expected. We could benefit from reinforcements.’

  She was right; there was no harm in portalling more of our forces to the gate. I’d have opened up all ten of my portals and poured our armies into the city if I thought that was going to be anywhere near as fast as charging our whole army in through the gate. But even with ten portals, they were too small; the enemy within Auricia would be able to cut our soldiers down as they appeared. No, we needed to enter in our thousands, and we needed to do it through the city’s southern gate.

  I looked around for Corminar to lead the unit, but in the chaos, I’d lost him. So instead I grabbed the first allied soldier I could see, my hand clasped around their shoulder. I looked into their young eyes as the portal opened in front of them. ‘Through,’ I said, ‘Open the gate.’

  The lost boy—not a man, not really—looked back at me, then nodded. He passed through the portal, and I waved more through. As they passed into the city, I caught sight of the number of enemy forces at the gate; no wonder Yua was having a hard time taking it. Just how many of those reinforcements would die in the process? And would it even make a difference?

  ‘Styk,’ Lore said. It was the first I’d heard from him in a while, so I was relieved to hear his voice. ‘I think… I think we’re in trouble over here.’

  ‘How bad is it? What’s going on?’

  When Lore didn’t immediately reply, Geron filled the silence. ‘The enemy are gaining on us. The tide of battle is turning fast. If this goes on for much longer, you will no longer have an eastern flank.’

  So quite bad.

  ‘Do we have a contingency plan for this?’ Geron asked. Though the man was practiced in keeping compose, I could hear the fear in his tone.

  I didn’t say anything, desperately thinking while I fought off enemies.

  ‘Styk?’ Lore prompted me.

  ‘I’m thinking!’ I shouted back. ‘I’m used to thinking in nicer circumstances, alright? Just give me a minute!’

  There was silence on the relays for only a second.

  ‘We don’t have a minute,’ Lore said. ‘We—’

  He must have seen it at the same time as me; movement, in the eastern skies. I thought at first that it was a dark cloud against the white, the sign of an incoming thunderstorm. But it moved too quickly, and too strangely, almost arching through the air. It wasn’t a cloud, of course. It was arrows. Thousands of them.

  ‘Corminar…’ I said as I watched the thousands of arrows pepper the enemies. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘What is it?’ Zoi asked. ‘What is happening over there?’

  Someone needed to inform the commanders that our luck had changed, but I kept silent, leaving Corminar to do the honours. After all, this was, in many ways, his moment.

  As another cloud of arrows entered the skies from the east, Corminar gave Zoi her answer. ‘The elves have arrived,’ he said.