As Tanner sat in his seat on the flying transport he knew there was something wrong with this battle. The normal hurried but practiced efficacy of the base had been off. The reactions of the people around him were off. He was getting a very bad feeling and he didn't know why. By now battles on the wall had become somewhat routine, but he felt sweat running down the back of his neck as he sat in a nearly-freezing hold of the shuttle.

 

His hand went to the hilt of his sword as the shuttle descended and he was spat out into the mid-morning sun. Sergeant Hamilton led them down into yet another bunker, one of dozens scattered along the wall. They didn't stay there long. In fact it took less than an hour for them to get called out of the reserve. That was another bad sign and Tanner's feeling of doom deepened. He caught Grace's eyes as they marched up out of the ground and up the nearest ramp. Then they were in the thick of it.

 

The battle started off alright. Tanner and Grace had once more ended up beside each other, mostly because they’d been sitting next to each other on the shuttle and walked next to each other up the wall. Tanner liked having her beside him. He trusted her, more than anyone else on the base, well, besides his dad. She parried a cutter’s claws with her axes and Tanner skewered it with his long rapier. She gave him a small smile as he pulled back his sword and he gave her a nod before helping the soldier on his other side with another cutter. The morning was bright, and surprisingly warm for a day less than a week before christmas. Still, Tanner held on to his trepidation, even as the routine combat continued into the afternoon before they were rotated back off the wall.

 

“What’s wrong?” Grace asked as the two sat in their normal position against a wall. She was staring intently at him with her big blue eyes and Tanner really wanted to kiss her but it seemed she was finally picking up on how nervous he was.

 

“What do you mean?” He asked, being intentionally difficult.

 

Grace didn’t bother to reply, not that Tanner expected her to. She’d never spend words if a glare would do the trick. 

 

“Something terrible is about to happen.”  Tanner told her.

 

“You psychic now?” Grace asked. Her sarcastic smirk let him know she wasn’t buying it.

 

Tanner rolled his eyes. “Common don’t tell me you’ve never had a day like that. When you just know something bad is going to happen. Well, today is one of my days. Something awful is going to happen during this battle. I don’t think it. I know it.” He said.

 

“So you are psychic?”

 

Tanner thought it over and shrugged. “I think most people are.. At least a little. That feeling you get when you know someone is watching you. When two friends call each other at the same time. When a mom knows her son was in a car crash, even two states away.” Tanner shrugged again. “That’s nothing to do with systems. That’s just human.”

 

Grace grunted but didn‘t say anything and the two lapsed into comfortable silence. Then they went back on the wall and just as Tanner suspected, everything went to shit.

 

It started alright. The rotation held well and things were honestly a bit slow. A few demons here and there made the wall but were easily dealt with by the soldiers. Hundreds of demons still charged forward but the main killing ground where the mortars and heavy machine guns chewed up and scattered the biggest groups were doing their work. 

 

The first clue something bad was happening was a ripple out in the killing ground. Tanner didn’t even notice but the army’s scouts did. What Tanner did notice was the first red signal rockets fly into the air a moment before a large dome of orange-red light snapped up into a shield. It deflected the explosions and bullets letting a veritable horde of demons cross the short distance and approach the river bank. The guns and mortars retargeted but more magic flew out, and the cold river froze-over. Normally freezing a river the size of the Missiori was impossible, even with multiple days in a row of sub-zero cold. There was just too much water and it was all moving, so even if it did freeze over it would be far too thin to walk across. Still, magic did what nature could not and although it would likely melt again quickly, for the moment a horde of demons now had no obstacles at all. 

 

They poured up the wall in a flood and Tanner wished he had a shield. A sword was all well and good but without some serious AOE striking power he was so fucked. The soldiers on the wall all started firing off their abilities wildly. Swathes of lightning and flames flew from the wall and down into the monsters while flaming swords, ghostly spears, and super-powered punches carved large chunks out of the horde. They might as well have been pissing on a forest fire.

 

Tanner firmed his resolve. If he was going to go out. He’d make one hell of a mess. He poured mana into his sword in a flood, so much the blade itself, not just the runes, started to glow and the first cutter up the wall he cut completely in half. With his blade empowered to such a degree the creature's flesh nearly leapt apart. He dropped to a knee, letting a crawler’s tail whistle over his head. He rolled his wrist and cut, slicing the crawler in half then carrying through to hack the blade-arm off a cutter further to his right. The battle was a mess and there was no way Tanner could keep up the current mana consumption for more than a minute. Still, with his levels, and a complete lack of concern about endurance, his speed made him a buzzsaw against the weak demons.

 

It wasn’t enough and Tanner saw the man to his right torn apart by two crawlers. He wanted to cry out, to freeze up, but he had no time. There were too many to be distracted for even a moment. Just as he was about to be swarmed down as well, he heard a yell.

 

“DOWN!”

 

Tanner didn’t dive down, so much as collapse, a cutter claw sliced into his shoulder a moment later as the creature made the top of the wall and crawled over him. It burst into flames as a river of fire swept back and forth, sweeping the wall clear of demons, as well as any soldiers who hadn’t ducked. That was somewhat unfortunate because instead of a demon claw stuck in his shoulder, he now had a burning demon claw stuck in his shoulder, and was stuck under its burning body. At least until Grace reached over from beside him, yanked the blade out, and pushed the monster off him. Tanner sat up to see a tallish man in a black robe standing on the battlements, rune-staff in hand. The crystal on top glowed a deep crimson as he poured flames down onto the horde.

 

This wasn’t some small time mage. He had to be high tier 3 at least. The man snarled as a dozen spells flew from his hands all at once. Fireballs flew out six at a time, each exploding with the force of a mortar round. Beams of fire formed and swept across the mass of demons, cutting them apart like high-powered lasers. Gouts of fire exploded from the ground blowing demons, and chucks of demons fifty feet into the sky.

 

.He killed demons by the dozens, by the hundreds, but even his mana was wearing down. Sweat was pouring down the man’s face as he held back the tide for a 100ft section of wall all by himself. Finally, a heavy shell, redirected from one of the big artillery pieces, slammed into the magic shield the demons were using as cover. The shield shattered with a crack that sounded like tectonic plates grinding together then mortars and machine guns started back up and the horde staggered to a halt.

 

Tanner was glad, because his shoulder felt awful, one part was a deep wrongness that he knew was corruption and the other was just pain, white-hot and ugly as blood poured out of the wound. He needed a moment to center himself but it didn’t seem like he was going to get it as the mage staggered and fell to a knee, his spells fizzling out. The demons started up the wall again a moment later, although now in more acceptable numbers. The problem was at least half the troops on this part of the wall were dead and someone sure as shit needed to be standing guard. Tanner started back to his feet but Grace pushed him back down.

 

“You’re bleeding all over the place, lemme slap a bandage on it before you bleed out, moron.” Grace said, her normally stoic face looking worried. She knelt next to him and dug around in the pockets on her uniform until she found a field-bandage. Then she unzipped the heavy coat Tanner was wearing and pressed the bandage over the wound in his shoulder. It had a hint of magic, so it bound itself to the wound. It would stop the bleeding and plug the hole until a medic could look at it.

 

“You might wanna check the back too. Not sure if it went all the way through.” He told her through his clenched teeth. Grace bent around his shoulders and looked at his back.

 

“Shit… It did go through. No way in hell you can fight like this.” She said. 

 

“I’m not sure we get a vote….” He grunted as he nodded back towards the battle below.  A cutter sprinted up the wall, this one larger and crueler than any he’d ever seen. Its carapace was black instead of the normal dark-brown and various spikes and bits of bone jutted from its carapace.

 

Grace swallowed in fear, but gripped her hand-axes and stepped forward. Tanner staggered up to his feet and gripped his sword tightly in his left hand. Grace was no match for a dire-cutter, hell they both might not be. ‘Dire’ was the common name for an improved version of a basic demon. Instead of having physical abilities on the low-end of tier 1. They had abilities somewhere around the low end of tier 2. A person in the upper 1st tier could likely fight them with a good plan and rune-weapon if they were willing to burn all their mana but neither he or grace were above level 6, and he was injured, and both had already spent most of their mana.

 

Worse than all of that, was the fact more demons were coming. There wasn’t going to be time for a proper duel where they could use the two vs one to wear it down. Grace moved forward with a desperate aggression, throwing a few punches at the creature’s side and following the combo up with her stomp ability. The blows cut into the creature’s chitin but only just, and her stomp missed completely as the monster scuttled away with an insectile grace that belied its larger form. It counter-attacked viciously with its scythe-claws and grace took a nasty cut on one arm before Tanner chased the monster back with an awkward thrust.

 

The monster backed off a moment, which freighted Tanner more than he’d admit. A stronger, faster, and tougher monster was a problem but a smarter monster could be deadly. The fight became a stalemate for the next few seconds as the monster didn’t have a good way to deal with the pair of them and they could only deal superficial damage to it. They might have won eventually but time was one thing they didn’t have. Tanner could feel himself slowing and his grip on his sword loosened as a cold lethargy seeped into him. 

 

His shoulder must still be bleeding internally, he thought sluggishly with an oddly calm detachment. The monster rushed at Grace a third-time and Tanner stepped forward to chase the monster back again but another crawler came leaping up the wall next to them and he had to dodge aside to keep its tail away from his eyes. That let the dire-crawler finally close on Grace and she screamed as one of its giant claws sank into her side. Tanner watched everything unraveling as the dire-cutter reared up over Grace for the killing blow and Tanner did the only thing he could think of. 

 

He rushed forward with the desperation of a man who already knows he's dying. The runes on his sword brightened until the whole blade glowed as he poured everything he had left into it for a single attack. He crossed the three steps to Grace in a moment with all the super-human speed he could muster then rammed his sword and his body into the side of the monster. The runed-blade sank all the way to the hilt then Tanner’s shoulder hit a moment later and the sickening pop let him know he’d just torn the joint out of its socket. That didn’t matter though,as his tackle sent both him and the monster over the side of the wall and into the dark water far below.

 

*********************************

 

Twenty miles to the West

Sergeant Jergen cleaved five demons in half with his massive sword as a mortar exploded just to his left and blew a group of spitters into chunks. The acidic gore rained down around the crater and killed at least two-dozen more demons as Jergen spun into a new group, cutting the demons down and breaking up the horde for the defenders left on the wall.

 

He knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The battle chatter on his radio and reports coming in up and down the wall. That trick with the shields had been brilliant. The demon’s must have thrown away hundreds of Adept's to pull it off but they’d damn near halved the forces on the wall in ten minutes. There were already demon’s by-passing the defenders and once that started things would go downhill in a hurry. 

 

Few people really realized how precarious the line had become. It had been years since they’d gained any ground and they were now forced into drafting kids for christ’s sake. The whole line was only one or two lost battles away from collapsing completely and wherever they tried to fall back to would lack such a convenient natural obstacle like the river, and force them to defend an even longer wall. They’d never manage it, he thought bitterly but he was a soldier and all he could do about it was keep fighting.

 

He activated an ability and lightning crackled around him as he seemed to teleport fifty yards to his right, smack into the middle of another massed group. The power rushed away from him in a nova of electricity and the demons nearest him fell to the ground smoking and twitching as he casually butchered their still-standing allies.

 

Jergen searched around himself for another likely group of targets but stopped as he heard the drums. His face fell and he hefted his sword and rushed towards the growing noise. He moved east, crossing the bombed out wasteland north of the river at the speed of a galloping horse. He cut through a few packs of demons, but speed was more important now. At least he hoped it was, if what he feared was happening actually…..

 

His thought chopped itself off as he felt a gathering of power far beyond anything he’d ever experienced. The air thrummed with so much magic Jergen stumbled and tripped in a crater. He popped back to his feet and ran faster but he knew it was already too late. A beam of red-black demonic energy blazed across the battlefield in a cone of destructive power that slammed into the wall. Defensive runes flared for a moment but they were meant to stop demons in the second or third tier from bringing down the walls. This spell was an order of magnitude beyond that. The runes only lasted a fraction of a second before they ruptured and a hundred yard section of wall just exploded. Chunks of rock, the steel reinforcements, and pieces of men were hurled backwards as if a giant had stuck the wall with a hammer the size of an office building. The spell cut off a moment later and Jergen’s heart plummeted.

 

“There really was a demon lord.” He said bitterly, he ran up the side of a small hill, then stopped as he looked down onto a nightmare. Elite demons had formed a ring around a single figure. There were hundreds of cored demons, enough to slaughter every soldier for a thousand miles. A single one of those could wreak havoc on anyone below tier 3. All of them together had more power than the army had any hope of stopping but worst of all was the demon in the center. The other's they could bombard with mages and heavy shells, especially as packed together as they were, but not with their leader defending them.

 

He seemed at once the most human and the most disturbing of any of the demons. He looked like a standard human around seven feet tall but all his features were subtly wrong, his cheekbones too sharp, and the angles of his face were all wrong. His skin was a mottled red and black. Horns ringed his head in something like a crown and he wore a palpable aura of power that made Jergen want to dig himself underground and huddle there until the monster went away.

 

Still, he was a soldier and for a monster like this it was his job to go down fighting. The demon raised a finger and pointed it towards another section of wall. The digit started to glow red as that horrible power started to build up again. Jergen gripped his sword and prepared to die fighting when there was a faint ripple from just behind the demon lord. An average looking woman in a military uniform stepped out from under a stealth ability and raised a hand as the demon lord worked his spell. A glowing white energy built in her hand for just a moment until it formed into a dagger made of ethereal blue-white crystal. The knife flickered in and out of view, as it was only partially in this world. Then in a single practiced motion she rammed her knife into the back of the demon lord’s head.

 

A half dozen things seemed to happen all at once after that. The spell the lord was readying collapsed instantly and wild destructive power washed over everything in front of the demon in a torrent of power that killed thousands of demons and rent the earth asunder. The blast-wave rolled over everything sending demons, and rocks flying in all directions and forming a crater a quarter-mile wide. The demon-lord fell to his knees and let out a scream of agony that washed over everything around him. The weaker demons nearby had their heads explode, while the stronger monsters, fell thrashing to the ground in agony. Even as far away as Jergen was, he felt his ear drums burst and by the red tinting his vision the capillaries in his eyes likely had too. 

 

He watched with a grim smile as the woman turned and ran, seemingly unaffected by the noise, casually dodging the attacks from one of the few demons not incapacitated by the lord’s scream. She ducked away from the slash of a greater-cutter, leaped off the shoulder of a stunned bone-beast. Then the night air around her rippled and she was gone again. 

 

There was a reason such a powerful person was stuck as commander of a back-water like this. It was because a psionic-assassin nearing tier 5 with the powers of illusion and hallucination made everyone nervous, especially people who had a great deal of power and a tendency to misuse it. After all, what good were money and bodyguards against the [Dream Knife]. 

 

“Because the knife of dreams cuts thought and not flesh.” Jergen muttered, unable to even hear himself speak. Jergen liked his boss, but he had to admit she terrified him. A moment later, four heavy rune-etched shells landed right on top of the still kneeling, and mostly brain-dead demon lord. That made a truly stupendous amount of noise and when the dust cleared, and magical effects stopped rampaging over the area there was nothing left. 

 

Jergen supposed they might find some pieces of the demon lord eventually, but he doubted it.