I stood on the Aurician Meadows with only Ted and Raelas at my side.

  Our three armies stood in formation some way behind us, quiet except for the orcish war drums and horns, their focus on the task at hand. Loyal banners billowed in the breeze. We’d made the decision not to merge the armies, keeping them within their own distinct command structures so as to avoid confusion. There were downsides to this, as each army had their own specialisms, but not so much to change our decision. We decided that with what we had planned, these specialisms might even work in our favour.

  ‘I’d still prefer to be with the rest of the army,’ Ted muttered. I ignored him; this was maybe the fourth time he’d expressed this sentiment.

  Bitter winds billowed around us, but none of us paid it any notice because at that moment, the southern gate of Auricia was opening. I hadn’t believed Elfric until then, not really. To think that Tana and the Council would really give up the protection of the city walls to fight us on the meadows… Well, I supposed she really didn’t care about winning; she only care about buying time for the ritual.

  ‘They coming,’ Gelik said through the portal relay I had activated. I had maxed out this ability, assigning all ten relays to part of our armies’ command structures. I was the only one who had one in this small trio; Gelik and Arzak had one each in the orcish army; Lore and Geron each one for the Coldharbour army; then one for Val, Corminar, and Zoi in the Tundran army; and the last two for Yua and Turell, who were currently on their own mission. It was enough to have eyes on the full battle at any one time, or so I hoped.

  ‘Mm. See that, mother,’ Arzak replied. This wasn’t really the time for the ancient tradition of mother-daughter bickering, but I had other things to worry about.

  The golden army poured forth from the city’s southern gate. Most wore the shining uniform of the Goldmarch, but it was those without armour that I was most worried by. These grey figures were the soldiers of corruption, and they still numbered more than I’d expected. From what I saw over the next few minutes, as many as a hundred of these soldiers poured forth from the gate and took their place at the front of the enemy army. But our plan for dealing with them could stretch to a hundred, if we were lucky.

  Though it would only take one straggler to wreak havoc without our lines.

  Raelas flicked her eyes to me. ‘I always knew we’d die side by side.’

  ‘Are you flirting?’ Ted asked. He looked to me. ‘Is she flirting?’

  ‘She does that,’ I replied.

  ‘Sure, fine, but is she really flirting right now?’ he repeated.

  Raelas shrugged. ‘I might not have much longer. There might not be any other time.’

  The enchanter groaned. ‘That answer really doesn’t help me.’

  ‘Tell Raelas I can hear her through the relay,’ Val said.

  ‘We all can,’ Lore added.

  ‘I think she’s counting on it,’ I replied.

  ‘Sorry, beautiful,’ Raelas said. ‘Just getting it outta my system.’

  Val said nothing.

  ‘How’s everything in the lines?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine,’ replied my wife.

  Geron answered next. ‘Wargs ready to move when you say.’

  ‘Yeah, all good over here, too,’ Lore said, his voice slightly muffled, as though he was currently eating.

  I looked over to the enemy line. We needed as many of them out of the city as possible for our plan to work. We had to give them as much time as they needed. ‘Not yet,’ I told Geron. ‘But keep them ready.’

  The number of soldiers that poured out of the city seemed endless. It was definitely far more than we’d accounted for. From the shining nature of many of their suits of armour, I suspected that many were new recruits. I could only hope that meant Tana had persuaded the people of Auricia to take up arms—and therefore they would not be equipped for battle. But I knew that the Council had ousted Amira, and I could only imagine they’d usurped not only her throne but her gold reserves too. These new recruits could have very easily been hired mercenaries, highly trained and unaware that they were fighting for their world’s destruction.

  Finally, when I thought I could bear the enemy army growing no larger, the southern gate closed behind them. Armies faced armies, and all was silent across the Aurician Meadows. The tens of thousands of soldiers currently standing on those rotting fields knew that only seconds of inaction separated them from the devastation of battle. I let them stew no longer.

  ‘Geron,’ I said. ‘Ride.’

  Fifty wargs burst forth from our army’s western flank.

  Though much of the orcish army had their own steed, we’d picked out a small portion of them for this part of the plan. We needed the fastest riders and the best rangers among them—and the latter was a class that orcs didn’t generally favour. Those that rode forth did so armed with longbows and crossbows, and carried flaming orbs that Zoi and Ted had worked upon with a few other enchanters among our soldiers. They would use these orbs to light the tips of their arrows, which were coated in oil-drenched rags.

  The warg riders galloped close to the enemy lines, and Geron roared the order to fire at will upon the soldiers of corruption. Fifty flaming arrows rained down upon the monstrous being in one initial wave, and the enemies began to hiss and squeal. It wouldn’t be enough to defeat them—we knew that from our past encounters against these soldiers—but defeating them wasn’t our intent. We’d thought previously that fire was the corruption’s only weakness, but our dealings with these creatures over the past few months had proved that this was far from true. All we needed was for the warg riders to provoke them into an attack.

  And attack they did.

  The moment the enemy ranks broke, Geron shouted for her riders to retreat. The wargs turned on the spot, and rode backward—but not towards the orcish line; instead, they rode around me, Ted and Raelas. They drew the charging soldiers of corruption our way.

  ‘I’m never going to forgive Corminar for this,’ Ted said, his eyes on the hundred or more monstrous soldiers charging towards us.

  ‘I guess now is as good a time as any to say that there is no blood debt,’ I revealed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A blood debt isn’t a real thing,’ I said. ‘He made it up.’

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  Ted glanced back towards our army.

  ‘It’s a bit late to run now,’ I told him.

  The enchanter sighed. ‘I really do hate all of you.’

  ‘I know.’ I turned to the tiefling. ‘Raelas? You ready?’

  ‘To die?’

  ‘To fight.’

  ‘Would I be here if I wasn’t?’ Raelas winked at me.

  ‘And you, Ted?’ I asked. ‘Are you ready to imbue us with mana?’

  ‘Would I be here if I wasn’t?’ Ted echoed Raelas, though much more sarcastically.

  ‘If you don’t, you die,’ I reminded him. ‘We’re gonna need all the mana you have if we’re going to get through this.’

  Ted shrugged, but to his credit, he did raise his hands and begin to enchant not his usual sweets, but to enchant our forms directly. Glowing orange light arced into both me and Raelas, and I felt my mana reserves replenishing.

  ‘Good. Let’s do it.’ I nodded to the meadows ahead of us, to where the soldiers of corruption were closing the distance fast. I pushed both hands down at my sides, and opened my grasp, willing eight of my ten portals into existence in front of the charging soldier. Raelas did the same, opening the two that was her maximum. We opened them sideways, their exits facing nearly directly up into the sky.

  And the soldiers of corruption ran into them.

  One thing that I’d learned over the past few months was that the system no longer considered this latest generation of corrupted soldiers to be sapient. And the funny thing about that? It meant my portals could cut straight through them, just like it had around the arm of the soldier that had infected Arzak.

  The line of portals cut the charging monsters in half. Moving as fast as they were, it would take them a second to realise what had happened. But I wasn’t going to give them a chance to react; I now used my latest Worldbending ability to throw the open portals into them.

  It didn’t matter that Raelas couldn’t move her portals, because I could. My portal manipulation ability didn’t specify that I had to move my portals, only portals in general. And, of course, we hadn’t just assumed that this was the case; we’d checked for ourselves.

  Bodies fell to the muddy fields, and countless defeat notifications began accumulating in the back of my mind.

  ‘Aha!’ Ted cried out in sheer joy, as his magicks continued to pour into us, as the monsters fell before us, as the armies roared their support behind us. ‘Ahahahaha!’

  Raelas and I shared a fleeting perplexed glance.

  ‘Is this what it’s like?’ the enchanted shouted. I realised that he, too, would be getting all the defeat notifications for his part in the action. ‘Is this what it’s like to be a hero?’

  I couldn’t help but smile. ‘This is what it’s like.’

  When it was done, our portal gambit didn’t kill all the soldiers of corruption, but only a handful remained. It was good enough; we’d done our part to thin their ranks. Between me, Raelas and the fire users in our army, we could defeat the rest if we prioritised them.

  Still, tens of thousands of regular Goldmarch soldiers remained; even with this initial attack having been a success, the real battle was yet to come. Those other, sapient, soldiers, now charged, and so too did the three armies at our rear.

  The battle had now begun in earnest, Lore and Geron leading the charging Coldharbour army to our right, Arzak and the regrouped Gelik leading the orcs on our left, and Val and Corminar assuming command of the Tundran army directly behind us. In a few seconds, soldiers would clash against soldiers, and the real chaos would begin.

  And as for Yua and Turell? They were leading their own, smaller, units into the city, behind enemy lines.

  Through my other two portals.