Fire, death, steel, blood and violence. It all came together to make a battlefield with men and monster eager to cleave and claw each other’s life away. What had first been a normal day on the wall, had rapidly turned into shit once the scouts and patrols retreated, few got back with their lives. They talked of monsters coordinating with intelligence, the gremlins in the black fields abandoned their little packs and forming into full out tribes, the wolves of the evergreen forest annihilating every living thing in the vicinity.

Jacob tried to chuckle, but his chest was constricted by his own armor. Around him, the battle went on. Things had changed since that morning, when there were only two worries in his mind, training and patrolling. Now, he had to worry if he could even live through this day. 

“GET UP! GET UP YOU LITTLE SHIT PISS, GET UP AND FIGHT!” His instructor, chief officer Halbert, shouted. His voice fighting against the cacophony of a hundred creatures wails of terror and pain. Jacob looked at him with unfocused eyes, and only the powerful pull of the instructor put him onto motion. 

Jacob grabbed a spear from a dead militiaman’s hand, his sword had long cracked and broken. He dropped his chest armor, so that he could breathe and prolong his life for a little while. The battle was deadly, militiamen, most of them men who were young and unawakened, died in the dozens. Yet they were probably the group with the most kills, in their numbers they excelled. Even if a monster was capable of wiping out a couple of them in seconds, they could still be injured by sharp steel spears.

The guards fared better, with skills and gifts, they had far more survivability and versatility. Pity that most of them had stagnated in their comfy posts, and there were ones who even lost skill levels from years and years of neglect. It was a striking difference really, the old ones had died in the beginning of this nightmare, which left the young ones to lead this whole fucking shit show. 

“Mother Mercy please spare me from this terrible nightmare I am sorry that I didn’t pray enough I am sorry that I sinned and stole and killed I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry I am sorry.” And then they were those who were broken, rambling, pleading for mercy, eyes empty staring at the air. They were food to the monsters, and Jacob couldn’t give a damn to men who broke so easily.

Jacob stepped on the bodies of monsters and men to reach the back line. There he stayed, looking over the masses as they battled and died, his eyes roamed the frontline, searching. Among the ordinary men were adventurers, they were supposed to be the ones who would turn the battle around, yet the stronger monsters specifically targeted them.

There, on a house, was his father. He was holding a black candle with several rainbow candles floating around him. He blew on the black fire, spewing out into a carpet of dark blaze that splashed onto a half lion half turtle with three horns. 

Jacob smiled, a hint of adoration in his eyes. Quickly, he focused. The instructor told him that everyone had a different way of interacting with their gifts, for Jacob, it was the light of Mercy that gave him an interface into his own gift.

The light from Her Grace illuminated his face, from those strains of light he felt his gift, (Lumina). With a mental click, the light that fell upon his body increased tenfold, like he was under Prime’s spotlight. Jacob jumped on the back of a man, activating several skills to catapult him over the battle lines. He landed between the monsters, and his light burned the skin and fur off the gremlins and wolves near him.

He coated his spear with light and stabbed it. The light-infused spear cut through the monsters like butter. He activated his protection skills; their levels were written in glowing glyphs that only he could understand. They were in the early-twenties, a rather high level compared to the other guards who had joined with him at the same time.

A commotion knocked him out of the battle trance, he retreated behind the front line and looked behind him. A great cloud of dust was rising up further to the side, he climbed into a roof and gawked as a part of the wall simply collapsed. Through it came even larger monstrosities, kings of the forests outside the city.

The Emerald Bear, The Silver Scorpion, and Sabertooth. The last one had killed his buddies father, he could see though that the Sabertooth didn’t have an easy fight from the holes it now had permanently in its body. The battle between those two had happened only a month ago now, and he saw with his own eyes how their arena obliterated the surrounding environment.

The giant monsters strolled through the break in the wall, they were left uncontested. The mages too busy trying to extinguish the dungeon before it spawned something big, the commander of the current army detachments was nowhere to be seen and his soldier were posted on meaningless positions.           

The Scorpion clicked a tune that turned Jacobs bones into jelly, The Emerald Bear roared so strongly that the houses in front of it simply disintegrated into wooden shards. The Sabertooth growled, and Jacob had the immediate reaction of running away and never looking back. What surprised him most was that another roar had joined the three, that of a lion.

He turned, and down the main road that led to the gate, a black lion with wisps of void clasping onto its mane, was prowling the street with slow steps. Behind him was a veritable army of monsters. 

Below, the fighting stopped. The men, militia and guard, turned around to see the new arrivals. A collective calculation was made, a fight from one direction was hard, a fight from two was even harder.

Jacob couldn’t blame them for fleeing, because he was doing it too. Hopefully the other gates haven’t fallen.

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and if you have any critics please send them to me, I would appreciate.

All the love for Mambell, the beta reader for this story.