Having beeablished decades ago, the Holy Army of Knowledge had mae units at silver and even gold rank. Other armies, both of nations and ods, had cked the forewarning of the goddess of knowledge. Without the lead time for recruiting and preparation, their ranks were mostly prised of people who had ranked up using monster cores. They hadn’t inteo be adventurers, having little bat experieside of monster surges. But when the call to war from their monarchs and gods came, they had not shirked their duties.

  After more than a decade of war, many of these forces were battle-hardened veterans. There were always new recruits, however, and eveeran troops fell short of adventurers with the same level of experience. Many forces were reliable and experienced, but less powerful due to fewer resources araining. They often had ae core leadership of current or former adventurers, but they were iably g pared to premier armies and Adventure Society task groups.

  That was not to say that these lesser groups had no value. Experienced hands were always assets, and there were far too many pces for the elite groups to be stationed. Low-priority areas where the messengers had shown no i were often protected by locally raised armies, taking on not just messehreats but monster hunting roles when so many adventurers were busy. In low-threat zohese less powerful groups were usually enough.

  War, however, was capricious and cruel. Circumstances could ge suddenly and without warning, turning a quiet backwater into a tested battleground. Such was the case in Segurado, a small city state in what, oh, would be Uruguay.

  The Segurado army was not ae force. Even the adventurers leading them were those that could be spared from more critical areas. There had been no indication that the messengers had any i in the area until, suddenly, they were everywhere. They had flown low, over and even through the jungle, so as to avoid dete from flying observer patrols. There was arm magi the jungle, but it had been avoided or disabled. That was always a threat, given the superior ritual magic of the messengers.

  The messenger force had closed oy walls before anyone realised, watchful defenders only sensing them as they made their final approach. Instead of moving straight to the attack, however, they abaheir low altitude positions and soared high into the air. Their numbers were so great they darkehe sky, as if storm clouds were passing over the city. What they had in store for the people below, however, was far worse than wind and rain.

  More numerous than the messehemselves were their bizarre summons; an expendable army of creatures ranging from the monstrous to the utterly unnatural. Disembodied eyes, encircled by tric metal rings. Giant bone cubes with mouths on each side, preheongues slithered from each sharp-toothed maw. Round cages filled with hundreds of arms that grasped through the bars at empty air.

  There ause, as if the messengers were waiting for the residents to look to the sky and panic. That malevolent mercy proved short-lived, with the popud the city’s defenders still scrambling when the messenger army desded. The dome of the city’s magical barrier snapped into pce as monsters and messengers raitacks upon it. The faint blue shield shook uhe downpour, from projectiles, beams and explosions to the brute force of fists, cws aacles.

  The defenders hurried to take positions, knowing the dome would not st long. As with Yaresh, years earlier, the barrier proteg the city had been desigo repel monster surges, nanised invasion. The messenger force cked the powerful artefacts that had colpsed the barrier in Yaresh, but Segurado was smaller than Yaresh, with a ensurately less powerful barrier. The invaders didn’t need anything but brutality and time.

  The Segurado army mao assume defensive formations before the barrier began colpsing, but they k would do them little good. They were far from elite, and the freakish monster army had them massively outnumbered.

  The leader of the Segurado army was General Millit Marks, an elven adventurer in the cssic spellcaster style of her people. She was stationed o roof of the city’s highest tower, alongside several other spellcasters. The city’s defences didn’t stop with the barrier, the tower serving to enhahe range and strength of spells.

  “They may be more ied in us than we hoped,” she said, looking up at the foes pounding the barrier. “At least we aren’t too much of a priority. They’ve used summons for most of their army, and there aren’t lot of gold rankers up there.”

  “Small mercies,” said her sed in and. Like most of the people on the southern half of the ti, he was an elf. “Milli, do you think we hold? Holy?”

  “We have a ce,” Millit said. “But even if the city holds, it’s going to burn.”

  The barrier was desigo hold off monsters while adventurers went out to meet them. No one was foolish enough to take that approach against the merciless and intelligent messengers, as that was asking for death. The most the dome could do for them was buy time for the popuce to reach monster surge bunkers and the Segurado army to take defensive positions. Some took formations on the ground, others in the air. A few took positions in defensive empts like the magic tower.

  Millit braced herself. She was gold rank and would almost certainly survive the ing battle. But she knew doing so would involve leaving her subordihe city and its people to a grim fate. She wondered if it might not be better to stand her ground and go down fighting.

  Silver and gold rankers were hard to kill and good at staying alive, especially adventurers. When messengers won a battle, most of the Pallimustus elites escaped to fight another day. Quite often, those victories came because the messengers were more willing to trade lives than the adventurers. The messengers would fight battles of attrition, going life for life until the armies and the adventurers could no loolerate the losses.

  Millit wondered if winning the war required people with the grim resolve to make the same sacrifice. Perhaps what she needed was not to escape but to take as many of them with her as she could. Her emotions wanted her to fight to the bitter end, but she k was futile.

  While the messengers were outnumbered on Pallimustus, there were more of them in the os than stars in the sky. Battle-ready silver-rank messengers could be grown and trained in batches, for a fra of the time and resources required to produ equivalent essence user. If the messengers had a secure aablished summoning station anywhere in the area, they could always replenish their numbers.

  Millit closed her eyes, f herself to take calming breaths as the barrier started to give way. She only allowed herself a moment of that before snapping her eyes back open. As the barrier colpsed, it didn’t crad shatter like gss. Ripples formed, like the surface of a pond, with holes at the tre of each ripple. Monsters poured through as the ripples kept expanding, running into one another until the barrier fell apart entirely, dissolving like mist.

  The ehat had yet to move plunged downward in a cascade of alien war beasts, with glorious winged warriors following behind. The monsters let out alien howls, spiingling shrieks and sounds that no living thing should be able to produce. The bone cubes let out noises like the grinding of teeth, amplified through a bullhorn. Other made sounds like metal shearing and ing.

  Their collective auras came down like a hammer. The emotions of the summons were clear, if rgely inprehensible. There was an alien malice, drowned in the madness of minds fually different from ordinary people, or even most monsters. As for the messengers, only the silver rankers were readable, and only to gold rankers like Millit. They held no hatred, only superiority, purpose and obedience. She couldn’t read their minds, but their emotions suggested they had few thoughts not given to them by their distant kings.

  Millit could also sehe emotions of her fellow defenders, and the popuce they were defending. Both were filled with despair that reflected Millit’s own. Few had any hope, and the little to be found was dying fast.

  Then something ged. Millit wasn’t sure what, at first, but the rea from the enemy was evident, immediate areme. Their dest stopped instantly, like a snap-frozen waterfall. Their auras roiled, a mix of fear, fury and fusion striking the messengers.

  Millit hadn’t known, until that moment, that fear was something they could even feel. She’d heard stories of captured messengers defying torture to the st scrap of life. As for the summons, she’d never sensed anything from their auras before than gibbering madness. They were suddenly coherent, focused on something high above, like a mouse watg a perched owl. The sudden ge was uling, even with the relief that their attention was no longer oy.

  Millit was immediately sure that something had appeared above the messengers. She couldn’t get a good read on it through the storm of enemy auras, and there were too many to see past. Then an aura cut through everything, and she knew immediately that it was responsible for whatever had just happeo the messengers.

  The aura was gold rank and far too powerful to e from a person. She’d sensed aura amplification like this before, built into the defences from major churches. It wasn’t a god’s aura, but not quite that of a mortal’s either. In any case, there was no temple in the sky above the city, st time she checked. Then she realised she had sensed something like it. Just once, very briefly. Every essence user had, in that strange moment when the system first appeared. What that meant, she had no idea, but in a city starved of hope, she’d take it.

  Whomever or whatever that aura beloo, she could feel the messerying and failing to suppress it. It pressive, yet benevolent, like the prote of a dictator. While that was certainly w, at that moment it was good enough.

  She was looking up, trying to see past the throng of ehe summons had always been a chaotic mess, but now they were a maelstrom of activity, dashing around and sometimes even fighting one ahey were fighting something else too, as were the messengers, but Millit couldn’t see what it was yet.

  Millit tapped the colr on her neck. unication systems had advanced in leaps and bounds over that st decade, and she could use the colr to speak to all her troops at once.

  “Whoever is up there,” she announced, “they’re battling the messengers. I don’t know if they’re fighting for us, but they’re fighting, and I won’t let them do it alone. All squads capable of air bat, go full assault. Right now.”

  Wind gusted around Millit, pig her up and carrying her into the sky. She didn’t allow herself to get carried away, letting the more defensive elements of her forces lead the way. Not only was she a ranged fighter but she o keep a broader view of the battle. This warred with her desire to unch forward and discover the nature of their mysterious reinforts, but she was an experienced ander and knew what rashness would cost.

  The Segurado army assaulted what was now the rear of the distracted messenger forces. It was still unclear who or what was above them, but Millit delighted at the distracted enemy. As she unloaded her powerful wind magic, she got her first sense of their presumed allies as she felt other essence users manipute the wind. One worked simirly to Millit, creating storm-like destru over a wide area. Another was much more personal, passing unharmed through the magical storms at speeds Millit could only sense, not see directly.

  She started spotting what had to be adventurers as they took the fight to the messengers. A man in rainbow armour ploughed through the messenger forces with seeming impunity, on the back of some shape-shifting creature. One moment it was an eagle ripping the wings from messengers with its talons. The , it was a floating slime that absorbed and disied the messenger summons. The man riding it swung a massive sword from which waves of force erupted out, striking the clustered summons like a hurrie hitting mosquitos.

  More presumed allies appeared, all apparently gold rank. Several were flying around iortoise shell whose upper and lower halves were ected at the ers but otherwise open-sided. Multiples spellcasters and healers appeared to be operating from within, protected by the strange vehicle. Millit watched several attacks fired at the open sides blocked by shell that grew up to shield them before retrag again.

  A massive set of spinning wheels appeared in the sky, lined up o one another like giant slices of sausage. They had symbols on them and occasionally the wheels would stop and fire off various effects. Some buffed and healed their allies, both the new adventurers and Millit’s forces, even those still on the ground. At other times, the wheels unched a dazzling variety of magical attacks at the enemy, from waters jets and fireballs to crippling debuffs. The more wheels with matg symbols, the strohe effed the more people were affected.

  One oddity she noticed was the presence of butterflies across the battlefield, glowing blue and e. The messengers avoided the beautiful creatures as if they were death inate, ung attacks at the butterflies to keep them away. It didn’t seem to help much, as the struck butterflies exploded into clouds of sparks. The clouds then sought out enemies, mostly finding the less wary summons.

  Wherever the clouds he victims immediately started to rot horrifically, even the ohat weren’t flesh. Those touched by the butterflies had a simir, but much slower effect. They started to produce more butterflies, however, that grew out of their bodies and flew off in searore victims.

  As the messenger forces lost cohesion and their numbers fell, Millit was able to identify more of what she hoped were allies. Eae seemed to be not just a gold ranker but a gold rae. The messengers evaporated in front of them like m mist before the sun. Millit was finally able to spot the source of the massive aura, floating in the sky. It looked like an eyeball the size of a castle estate, everything but the blue and e iris encased in dark red armour. Floating around the iris were smaller but otherwise identical orbs, eae the size of a house. These smaller orbs were the source of the butterflies, which poured out of them like water spilling off a cliff.

  The messengers were not fighting tactically, for which Millit was gd. They seemed obsessed with one of the batants, either fleeing from him or chasing after him with wild-eyed fury. The man had a dark cloak with shadow arms sprouting from it, like the branches of a macabre tree. She heard more than one of the fretackers screaming ‘heretig,’ whatever that meant. Expnations could wait until after the fighting was done.

  Still throwing out spells, Millit watched what was quickly turning into a massacre. The messengers were caught between her forces and these newers, small in number but great in power. With the messengers barely paying attention to them, the Segurado army made them pay, while safely evacuating their io the healers.

  By the time the battle was over, dead messengers scattered across the city below. The visiting adventurers had made them lootable ahem for her people to collect, rainbow smoke raising as messeurned into magical ons and supplies that would undoubtedly be put to good use.

  Millit hadn’t suffered a single death amongst her forces. There had been a couple of close calls, but more than once a shield had snapped into pce right before one of her people had suffered a killing blow. Only a short time ago, she had been pting whether to die fighting in defence of her home. Now, the invaders were dead, and her people were safe.

  She had some profound thanks to give.