As the elves joined our ranks, Corminar looked to me, and I nodded.

  Before I could even help him join his countrymen, the elf was slipping through the clashing soldiers, his portal relay hovering overhead. Soon, he was gone, and this relay was the only reason I knew what was going on. As I fought against enemies alongside allies unknown to me, Corminar grew closer to the elves that had come to our aid.

  ‘Enemies are breaking formation,’ Geron informed us.

  ‘They’re fleeing?’ Val asked.

  But we weren’t so lucky. ‘No,’ Geron answered. ‘They make for the elves.’

  ‘Corminar?’ I prompted him.

  ‘Understood.’ Corminar’s tone was firm. The arrival of his fellow elves had focused him.

  Just then, I heard distant lilting tones—that of an elf. ‘Lieutenant Cladenor. My apologise for our tardiness.’

  ‘I am only glad that you came, Ulara,’ my friend replied.

  As I listened in, I dodged the swinging axe of a lumbering Goldmarch soldier. My evasion meant that the weapon caught another of my allies in the back, knocking them to the ground. But I rendered swift vengeance. I stood straight once more and charged the enemy, as with a weapon so large, they couldn’t react quickly. I pummelled them with attacks in the form of a knifestorm activation.

  ‘We are at your command, lieutenant,’ Ulara’s slightly distant voice said.

  ‘Gods, they’re really just letting anyone command armies these days, aren’t they?’ Val commented.

  ‘At least he have war experience,’ Arzak said, apparently just as perplexed about having been given command of the orcish forces as the rest of us were about it.

  But unlike Arzak and Lore, Corminar adapted immediately to the responsibility of command. ‘Aim exclusively at those enemies that are directly in front of the gate,’ he ordered. ‘We are going to punch a hole in the enemy lines.’ A moment later, he added through the relays, ‘Commanders, do you understand?’

  ‘We push for gate,’ Arzak said at the same time that Val replied, ‘Got it, Cor.’

  ‘Have warriors and barbarians guard our flanks,’ I added. ‘Magick users, rangers, and the like, they should be the one added to the elves’ attacks.’

  ‘Mm. Understand,’ my orcish friend said, her tone flat. There was no fooling her with thoughts of heroism or glory; all she wanted to do now was to stop fighting once and for all. But she was still fighting alongside us none the less. She was good like that.

  ‘Lore?’ I prompted my friend on the eastern flank. ‘You got all that?’

  ‘Sorry, I, err…’ he muttered. Clashes of blade against blade followed. ‘Just dealing with something right now.’

  ‘Anything we can help with? The elves are your way, we could—’

  ‘It’s the depth-raider,’ he replied. ‘I’m on it.’

  I didn’t have much faith that he actually was on it, but at that moment I found myself taking on not one, not two, but three enemy soldiers at the same time. I could handle them easily enough these days—especially when they didn’t know I had some portal tricks up my sleeve—but it still required me to focus.

  ‘Warg riders!’ I heard Arzak shout on her end of the relays. ‘Push!’ Orcs erupted in battlecries as they followed Arzak’s order.

  But trying to break the enemy lines was just half of the fight. We also needed the actual gate open.

  ‘Yua?’ I asked her. ‘How’s that gate looking?’

  She didn’t immediately reply, and for a few seconds I thought we’d lost another key leader from our side. ‘We seem to be at a deadlock,’ she replied through deep breaths.

  ‘How about those reinforcements?’ I asked. ‘Did they not cut it?’

  ‘Indeed, they helped. Yet we could benefit from more still.’

  I looked around at the clashing armies. There was no point us fighting out here when we were needed in there, in Auricia, to stop the ritual. I opened all ten portals in the nearby vicinity, and just before leaping through one myself, I roared an order. ‘Through the portals! Open the gate at all costs!’

  I heard cries echoing my order erupt behind me as I leaped through into the city. I stumbled out onto a cobbled street, just the other side of Auricia’s southern gate, and just behind a good hundred Goldmarch forces that were defending it from the inside. Friendly soldiers poured out the other portals, at my side. I hadn’t intended this at all, but we’d flanked them.

  ‘Attack!’ I roared, and all those streaming through the portals charged with me.

  The skirmish was bloody, but thankfully more golden blood was spilled than our own. Not that those in Auricia actually had golden blood—that, as I had learned many times over in the past hour, was an unfounded rumour. When it became clear that this particular part of the battle was turning in our favour, I shouted for the soldiers fighting at my side to open the gate. ‘Open it!’ I shouted. ‘Head for the… for the…’ I realised I had absolutely no idea what the metal-rope-winch contraption was called. ‘Just open the bloody thing!’

  ‘The windlass!’ Yua shouted through the relays. I thought for a second that she’d chosen this moment, of all moments, to give me a vocabulary lesson. Actually, though, she was just giving an order to those fighting with her.

  I kept my focus on fighting off the Goldmarch soldiers, as more arrived at this gate with every passing moment, most of them descending from the city walls. Even with thousands of soldiers fighting in the meadows, it seemed that the Council hadn’t committed all their forces to the battle outside the walls. There were more inside. Hundreds more.

  I considered risking it, and opening a portal to the ritual circle. Perhaps this was a bluff, perhaps Tana knew that we’d think she’d planned for my portals. Wasn’t it worth the gamble?

  ‘We through!’ Arzak shouted, distracting me from my train of thought. ‘Wargs pushed through. Enemy lines fractured.’

  ‘The gate?’ a worried Val asked.

  ‘Working on it!’ I shouted back. I opened a portal and stepped through it to put some distance between myself and the enemies, then turned to see what was taking so long. As it happened, there were soldiers in the wall above the winch, raining arrows and spells down through narrow holes. These attacks pelted those trying to open the gate.

  But that, at least, was easily solved.

  I opened my ten portals once more, this time creating a protective layer above those next to the winch. The ten other sides of the portals? Above those dealing the very same attacks. Cries of pain erupted from the top of the archway.

  ‘Open gate!’ Arzak shouted, and I realised I could hear movement on the other side of those thick wooden double doors.

  ‘We’re try—’ I started, but at that very moment, the gate started shifting.

  ‘It is done,’ Yua told us all through the relays.

  ‘And not a moment too soon,’ Val replied. ‘Cheers, Yua.’

  ‘I also helped,’ I added. This received no reply.

  The second that the gates were open wide enough, an orcish warg rider galloped through, a battlecry spilling forth from their lips. More streamed in behind them to meet in battle those enemies on the city streets, and soon it wasn’t just wargs but soldiers of the Tundras and Coldharbour who reached the next stage of the battle. I glimpsed Arzak and Zoi enter the city, having both been fighting at the front of the western flank, and moments later, I saw Val too.

  ‘Push up the main street!’ I shouted, and immediately spotted Val, Arzak and Zoi relaying those orders to our forces in the city. They were met by those still spilling down from the walls, but also spells began to erupt forth from the looming rooftops. If I’d wondered why the enemy forces in the meadows were so reliant on physical martial skills, this was why—we just hadn’t reached the magicks yet.

  The Council had baked a fallback into their defensive strategy. They’d placed their magick users on top of the buildings of Auricia, those who could deal the most damage to the most soldiers the most quickly. And now, though we were finally inside the city, we were all pushed together by the narrow nature of the streets. It was the perfect location for an ambush.

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  But with enemies both ahead of us and behind, what else could we do but keep fighting?

  I portalled over to those by the winch. ‘Yua,’ I said, grabbing the governor by the shoulders and looking into her eyes, completely forgetting for a moment that she was the leader of a country. ‘Let as many of our side through the gate as possible, but the enemy is gonna follow. If we get cut off, if the Goldmarch forces start following us inside… close the gate.’

  The governor paused for only a second before nodding, as she had the strength to do what had to be done. ‘Of course. Though, those outside the gate?’

  ‘Will have to fend for themselves,’ I replied. How many more did I doom to die with those six words? On that note, I opened a portal behind me and used it to jump into the midst of battle once more, to where Arzak, Zoi and Val were leading the fight through the streets. They’d fought hard, but only managed to push about fifty yards up the road.

  The Council only needed a few forces on the main road, only enough to slow us down so that the magick users could do their work. Those at the front of our forces were mostly occupied by avoiding the fire, frost, lightning, poison and so, so many more types of magicks that were raining down from the sorcerers above. It was almost all they could do to dodge the spells; their efforts to actually attack those enemies on street level with us were severely limited.

  We needed to change the state of play, and of course, my portals were going to be our greatest weapon here. I opened six more portals, three opening onto the rooftops on each side of the street, and I ordered our soldiers through it. I grimaced only when I realised that these portals might trigger Tana’s counterattack to any portals. But nothing happened; whatever the Council had done to plan for my portals, it hadn’t stretched this far out from the palace. We were good, for now. I’d need to be careful as we grew closer to the ritual site.

  I didn’t step through the portals myself, this time. The magick users up on the rooftops would quickly crumble under attacks from warriors and barbarians at close range. It was still fighting on the street level itself that was the greatest danger, especially as more soldiers were coming to meet us. The Council must have used up a huge amount of the exiled empress’s wealth to hire so many mercenaries on such short notice. But then, what did they care for gold in a world that would no longer exist?

  ‘Styk?’ Val said.

  I looked ahead, at those soldiers charging down the main street to meet us in battle. Not all of them were mercenaries, no; some of them were more still of the corrupted soldiers. I opened up my pocket world and reached into it. While I’d counted on Ted to imbue me with his mana in the opening scene of the battle, I hadn’t expected to be fighting at his side at all times. Admittedly, I thought that mostly because I expected him to run at the first sign of trouble or to be cut down by the first attack sent his way. As far as I knew, he’d exceeded my expectations. So from my pocket world, I pulled a potion that Corminar had made earlier, and I drank it, replenishing my mana reserves.

  ‘Err, guys?’ Lore said through the relays. He hadn’t yet joined us, and was still some way behind, fighting his way through the gate.

  I didn’t have time to answer, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else. I opened ten portals once again, this time in the air four yards above the ground, and I waited to move them. In such a crowded space as this narrow street, the enemies were pressed close together. I couldn’t move my portals through living flesh, only the corrupted soldiers, and my aim wasn’t that good—especially when the targets were moving and I was trying to move ten portals at once. I picked off a few of the corrupted soldiers, but not all. At least, I told myself, it would help.

  ‘Zoi?’ I shouted. ‘I’m gonna need you do to the rest.’

  Flames billowed forth immediately, as though the tiefling sorcerer had been waiting for me to give her the order.

  ‘Guys!’ Lore shouted again. ‘I think it’s—’

  An almighty racket erupted from the relays, and I spun on the spot to look for Lore, who was still back down the cobbled street. Instead, I saw a huge pillar of crackling energy crackle into the sky, an eclectic mix of all kinds of colours—of all kinds of magicks, I realised. The pillar of magicks exploded into the sky for only a second, but it was powerful enough to clip the city wall and blasted bricks out of its side.

  ‘Lore?’ I shouted. ‘Lore? What was that?’

  ‘The depth raider,’ he replied a moment later. ‘It’s happening. It’s blown over.’

  ‘Can you control it?’ Val asked. ‘Can you direct it at the enemy?’

  ‘I can… try?’

  When the mix of magicks erupted a second time, it blasted back out towards the city, and hopefully towards the enemy army. Every few seconds, now, I heard the ear-splitting crackle, and I could only hope that Lore was successful in directing the depth-raiders attacks at the enemy.

  Val, Arzak, Zoi and I fought on, concentrating our efforts on the corrupted soldiers, as we all knew from experience that they could do the most damage. The four of us naturally gravitated towards each other, fighting as one unit. Arzak kept the regular enemies at bay with her dual swords, while Val sent lifedrain spells over her shoulder. I gestured my portals into and through monsters where I could, and where I couldn’t, I pointed to them. Zoi followed my points with targeted flames.

  ‘Clear a path!’ Corminar shouted. ‘Lore, clear a path!’

  ‘Is everything going alright back there?’ Val asked.

  Another pillar of magicks crackled through the relays.

  ‘Suffice to say, perhaps we should always have kept a pet depth-raider,’ Corminar said.

  ‘He’s not a pet,’ Lore followed up, but didn’t argue the rest of the sentiment.

  ‘As long as it’s going alright, I guess?’ I replied, then focused once more on our battle up the main street.

  Val sidled up to me, the freshly cropped side of her hair now also matted with blood. ‘You know, I think we could win this.’

  Arzak bashed a soldier and a spearman away with the swipe of her blade in the contraption-supported arm, then turned to us. ‘Agree. Think could—’

  Something about the way her words cut off made my gut twist.

  I turned to look at her. Val’s head followed suit. Zoi was still in the midst of a fire spell, but it was only a matter of time before she reacted, too.

  My orcish friend looked back at me, blinked, and then looked down at the spearpoint that had emerged through her chest. Through her heart. An attack had pierced her in the most vital place, and it had happened all so… suddenly. All so unceremoniously. All so unjustly.

  Her eyes still on the spearpoint, she said, simply, ‘Oh.’

  The spear’s owner yanked the weapon back, and Arzak fell. A knight of the realm stood over her body.