The gears cocked, emitting a rapid-fire metallic clicks as Sir Tristan’s makeshift army loaded the trebuchets. A tense humidity filled the air, hastening their preparations as dark clouds loomed over the mountains. The plains before Pragian were deceptively calm, but the uphill siege promised more than physical challenges. Unremarkable in all but reputation, Pragian had always been a crapshoot within amaze of magical misdirection.

  The invading army’s defenses betrayed their wariness. Elevated platforms sheltered their supplies from potential flooding, dikes reinforced weak points, and siege towers—fixed without wheels—anchored the lines.

  Sparing no expense, Sir Tristan’s ranks were a patchwork of top-dollar mercenaries, skilled engineers, and eager local militia, all bound by the urgency of his own survival. Victory was not just a task—it was the only viable outcome besides death.

  Inside Pragian, the townsfolk worked like a colony of ants preparing for the impending advance. Families—mothers, fathers, children—hauled bricks, boiling oil, and arrows to fortifications. Every house, anyone with a stake in this last gasp of pagan fortitude took their place amongst the wall to which they would call their own. Three generations to a few square feet. All willing to offer their last.

  Their hopes rested on one man: Draconian. Frail in body but unyielding in spirit, the wizard strode through the town, his presence a force unto itself. The air seemed to still in homage as the people parted for him, their courage bolstered by his quiet resolve.

  A lone messenger approached under a white flag, his donkey burdened with sacks of gold and silver for all to see.

  “Draconian!” he called, his voice slicing through the uneasy quiet. “I offer clemency and untold riches to any who deliver the wizard.”

  The townsfolk watched in hushed tension as Draconian stepped forward, his eyes unwavering.

  The messenger, emboldened by his own authority, began again: “Do you accept—”

  A voice dripping with mockery interrupted from the battlements. “Your ass is more appealing than your mouth! Bugger off before we combine the two!”

  Laughter rippled through the defenders, breaking the heavy stillness with a moment of defiance. The messenger stiffened, his face darkening as he wheeled his donkey back toward Sir Tristan’s lines. “I’ll pray for your souls,” he barked. “There’ll be nothing else worth saving by nightfall.”

  The laughter faded quickly, replaced by the quiet sobs of mothers cradling their children, holding fast to these precious moments before the horrors of war tore them apart.

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  Maneesh, Draconian’s former apprentice, approached silently. Without a word, he extended a thin, blackened vial from his robes—the elixir of a second life. Its gift was bittersweet: a fleeting resurgence of youth and unparalleled magical potential, paid for with an inescapable descent into death.

  Draconian took the vial with steady hands and turned to his people, lifting it high as though sealing a covenant. “I make my sacrifice so you may make yours,” he declared. “Together, we will carry our lineages into another generation.”

  With a single, decisive motion, he drank.

  The potion burned through him, twisting his features in agony as his frail body convulsed. Decades of lost vitality surged back—his gnarled hands unfurled, his sunken eyes blazed with raw magic, and his weathered frame now radiated with the vigor of a prime Draconian.

  Maneesh reached out to steady him as he rose, taller and stronger than he had stood before.

  The first raindrops fell—soft, expectant—as though the storm mourned what it knew was coming. A crack of thunder split the heavens, and the skies wept for what the wizard was about to unleash.

  Sensing the shifting tide, Sir Tristan ordered the assault. The first trebuchets fired, their granite payloads slamming into the walls with deafening force. The earth trembled beneath the relentless barrage, sending debris cascading onto the defenders. Yet, even as the township quaked, the pagans stood firm. They repelled the first wave of mercenaries, buying time for Draconian’s magic to reach its full fury.

  Then the storm broke.

  Rain poured in torrents, turning the dry floodplains into a rising tide. The clay soil softened, swallowing ladders and battering rams like a living thing. Lightning lanced from the heavens at Maneesh’s command, while Draconian summoned waves that surged through enemy lines, washing them into chaos.

  Sir Tristan’s army fractured.

  Powder kegs stored within the siege towers ignited, their violent explosions scattering flaming debris across the battlefield. His mercenaries, seeing their doom written in the floodwaters, fled, leaving the militia to drown. Tristan himself, caught in the unrelenting surge, vanished beneath the churning tide—his ambitions sinking with him, buried beneath an unmarked grave of silt and ruin.

  By morning, the waters receded, revealing a landscape of devastation. Drowned bodies lay tangled with shattered war machines, the fields thick with silt and wreckage. Only a single survivor remained—the messenger who had fled in time to witness the futility of steel and coin against the wrath of magic. What remained was not a victory to recount, but a tragedy that would echo through history as the Battle of the Non-Believers.

  Within the battered walls of Pragian, the people gathered in solemn reverence. Upon the shoulders of their bravest, the fading figure of Draconian was carried through the ruined streets. Their savior, frail but triumphant, was laid atop a bed of cushions at the highest point of the surviving watchtower.

  With Maneesh by his side, Draconian gazed out at the retreating storm clouds, watching the dawn break over the broken land.

  The township was unrecognizable—homes reduced to rubble, walls scarred by fire and stone—but its people remained unbroken. As cries of relief and victory rose from below, Draconian sank into his cushions, his strength waning beneath the weight of his sacrifice. His vision blurred, his breaths grew shallow, and his thoughts clung not to peace, but to doubt.

  Had it been enough?

  Had he truly secured another generation for his people?