***

  Arrows fell from the sky with an unhindered and cruel malice of indifference, piercing both men and horses indiscriminately. Wounded men and horses ran around in frantic states, screaming or neighing in pain. The sun was like a dragon’s breath, scorching all those living and dying.

  The crows, attracted by the sweet smell of blood in the air, flew high above in the sky, eagerly anticipating the horribly prepared feast. The furious clashing of swords drowned out the screams of men crying for their mothers and wives. Soldiers lay on the bloody ground turned into red mud, clutching their wounds, trying to crawl their way to safety while others of an evil and cruel nature on both sides stabbed mercilessly at them, lost in this brutal ecstasy of violence. Few managed to be dragged away by comrades to safety. The chaos of battle screamed across the land, and it was a ruthless storm raging in the Kimmer Sea Plains.

  Prince General Uthman looked at the glorious scene in front of him. He was dressed in his battle armor. The armor was pale green to match the Jade Scorpion of his house’s banner. His hair was braided with black silk ribbons intertwined through it. Under his arm was a silver helmet with cheek guards shaped like scorpion pincers.

  “Loudas will fall today! Bring me my horse! I go to battle!” Prince Uthman exclaimed.

  “My Prince, there is no need for you to sully your sword today. Look, they are already collapsing,” Meckus said, protesting his nephew’s decision.

  “I will go, uncle. Perhaps you are too old for this?” Prince Uthman questioned his uncle with a challenging grin.

  “Ha-ha-ha Come, nephew, let us see if I will leave you any glory this day,” Meckus said, smiling back. Both men climbed into the saddles of their mounts. Ahshean mounted up to join them.

  “Cousin, I am sorry, but today you are meant to be the last messenger,” Prince Uthman said, raising a hand and stopping Ahshean from mounting his horse.

  The last messenger was the person with the responsibility of reporting to the King the outcome of a battle. If the battle was won, then it was an honorable assignment. But if the battle was to turn against them and they should lose, then it was an unfavorable position to be in and yet was a necessary one. Prince Uthman could see the disdain on his cousin’s face.

  “I mean you no disrespect in this. I just fear your mother would kill me if anything were to happen to you,” Uthman joked. The joke seemed to work on Ahshean as he smiled.

  “I will watch and report,” Ahshean said, pausing for a moment, “And I will report of uncle’s deeds of valor today,” he finished. Their uncle, Meckus, laughed as he kicked his horse in the side.

  “Well said. You hear that, Prince Uthman?! My glory is assured!” Meckus yelled over his shoulder, his horse speeding off. Uthman smiled at his cousin and followed his uncle with haste. Ahshean watched his uncle and cousin, along with two hundred mounted men, descend around the side of the hill to dive into the glorious rage of battle.

  ***

  Clyden looked through the peephole of the gate, studying the chaos of battle unfolding before his eyes.

  “It is time, Zander. Remember when the last man is through, you must burn the gate. It will stop anyone from trying to get through and keep it going until you are sure the gate is destroyed,” Clyden said, turning to look at the men on their horses. The gate was so huge, and once opened, they could never close it again, leaving an open door into Dragon Crest. The flames would be the only thing stopping an invading army from rushing through.

  About a hundred feet from the gate, the Loudas cavalry was in formation. There were fifty cavalrymen side by side and a hundred rows deep. Older men carrying buckets of animal fat and oil painted the massive gate as high as they could reach. To the left and right of the gigantic gate laid large piles of wood soaked in oil. At the very back of the cavalry formation, there were at least thirty wagons loaded with larger logs gathered from the forests around Dragon Crest.

  “Clyden, will this work?” Zander asked. He had doubts about committing every cavalryman in Dragon Crest on one strike while leaving the gate open for a counterattack. At least the sun is at our backs; a slight strategic advantage, Zander thought to himself while studying his elongated shadow stretching to the gate.

  “It only has to work once, Zander,” Clyden said. And this will be the last time such a feat will never be done. Clyden was the only one who knew the difficulties of what he was about to do. He theorized, sounding much like his beloved friend Lizbeth, that doing this would cost him his life at the most or rob him of the ability to cast magic ever again. Either possibility was scary, and he did not know which he preferred. Even so, he found the resolve to commit to such an action. Maybe the guilt he carried around about his friends’ deaths led him down a suicidal or self-crippling path in some distorted sense of justice he felt he deserved. Perhaps and more than likely, the reason was that Danyais’ children were his friends’ namesakes, and he would never allow them to fall into the hands of enemies. Clyden would burn the world for them. He would return to how he was when the ignorant worshiped him as an evil god if it meant Ari and Ryghton would be safe.

  Ari sat on her horse next to Cina, surrounded by her guard, now swollen to over fifty men. Earlier, Zander tried to persuade Ari to leave the gate area, but she refused. Causing him to repeatedly curse and kick at the ground, wishing for peace while glaring at everyone as if they were the reason for Ari’s stubbornness. In the end, Ari offered her uncle a compromise and had her brother return to Rose Claw for safety.

  Clyden began to cast a spell, and Witch Devil glowed. The flags within the formations glowed and became rigged like they did when she delivered her speech before. Clyden ushered his horse quickly to Ari, with Zander following. Clyden held out his glowing glaive in front of Ari; she laid her fingers on the blade.

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  “My fathers! My brothers! My uncles and cousins!” Ari shouted. Those with shields pounded their fists on them. If they held spears, they tapped them together with others. It was a noisy river of bravery, fear, and anticipated violence. Ari listened to their heartbeat of war for a moment. “All that matters!” she shouted.

  Five thousand cavalrymen sitting on well-rested horses shouted, “Family!” back at Ari. They repeated it over and over. The words Ari delivered earlier, like a single withered and dried up leaf being put into a blacksmith furnace, burned their fear away.

  “Now, Zander!” Clyden shouted, ending the spell.

  Zander rode away, pulling a tall spear free with a purple flag stabbed into the ground near a team of ten large oxen twice the height of any man. The oxen were blindfolded so they would not panic when the cavalry rode straight at them. The closest oxen team to Zander was tethered with thick chains to the upper right-hand corner of the enormous gate. Matching oxen teams were positioned in the middle and on the left side of the gate. Zander stood up in the stirrups of his horse. He raised the flag high and waved it feverishly, the purple flag catching the wind, giving the oxen-team drivers the signal.

  “Now!” Zander shouted. The oxen moved in unison, their muscles bulging, letting out massive grunts and whines as they protested the weight of the gate they were trying to pull down.

  The massive gate refused to budge, proving too much for the oxen to handle. Clyden sighed inwardly before dismounting and running towards the gate with Witch Devil in hand. If I do this, it will end me. He hesitated, even though he knew what was at stake. Clyden looked at the massive gate, contemplating his own potential demise. Some of the mounted men cheered the oxen drivers on, while others cursed the beasts for not being strong enough. It was the sound of Ari’s voice pleading with the oxen drivers and beasts to give it their all. Her words provided Clyden with the push he needed.

  All in! Clyden looked at Witch Devil, and a bright orange aura surrounded him. He touched the massive gate, turning its edges a bright orange as if a blacksmith was heating iron for shaping. With a cracking sound from the stone, the gate finally loosened, the sound traveling down the orange outline of the gate starting near Clyden until it reached the far end opposite of him. The bright orange aura flickered around Clyden; he let a scream of fury and agony as his aura vanished. He reached for his magic essence, and it was gone. Clyden felt lost, angry, afraid, grateful he was alive, and yet wished he wasn’t at the same time. Clyden reached out for his magic again, but there was no sign of the inviting glow that accompanied him for all his life. His magic was gone.

  The massive gate, large enough to allow fifty men to ride at full speed in formation, was finally pulled down by the oxen teams. It impacted the ground with a loud thunderous thud, kicking up dust. The gate pounding into the land acted as a gong, bringing Clyden back from his despair and forcing him to focus on the task in front of him.

  A horseman rode swiftly towards Clyden, towing his warhorse. Clyden ran towards them, tossing Witch Devil at him. The man snatched the glaive out of the air while Clyden ran temporarily on the horse’s side before jumping onto the steed’s back, not even breaking the horse’s stride. The man escorting Clyden’s horse passed Witch Devil back to the magus. Clyden raised Witch Devil over his head and kicked the horse to full speed, passing through the large opened gate. Sukkan would pay dearly for what they cost him.

  The cavalrymen of Loudas saw the Sukkanian army before them. They kicked their horses into a torrential motion, spurring them into a wave of fierceness. The horses parted around the blindfolded oxen team in the middle of the gate. In a collective voice, the men were yelling, “Family!” as they passed through the opened gate. Cavalrymen charged through the gate furiously, banners snapping in the wind. The Loudas cavalry spilled out from the gate fifty at a time in swift succession onto the Kimmer Sea Plains through the largest Fade Realm gate ever made.

  The last fifty of the five thousand cavalrymen rode over the gate before bringing their horses to a stop. Each man had a stomach of a butchered animal filled with oil tied to a rope. They all briefly rotated the stomachs attached to the ropes before slamming them against the gate. The impacting force broke open the stomachs and covered a large section of the gate in oil before they set off to catch up with their comrades.

  “Fire the gate!” Zander yelled at the remaining people left on the outside of Dragon Crest’s walls. “If it burns, throw it in. I don’t care if it is your Gran’s favorite chair! Toss it in!” Men grabbed logs soaked in oil and tossed them on top of the gate. The gate quickly turned into a massive inferno, the flames licking up the stone walls of Dragon Crest. Even Princess Ari was tossing in weaved baskets and smaller logs she could carry, her face covered in soot before her guard forced her back to the castle.

  The wagons transporting the larger logs were moved as close as they could get to the raging fire, while teams of four worked to unload the logs and ferry them to the raging fire. Men and women carried blankets soaked in water, trading them to those working the frontline of the fire, trying to offer them dull moments of respites from the inferno. The one Zander had on was steaming from the heat.

  Once the last of the logs were thrown into the fire, Zander ordered the horses to be cut from the wagons, and they pushed them into the flames. Zander staggered away from the heat, marred in sweat and ash, looking around to see if anything else could be added to the fire. He reached into his pockets to see if he had anything to add to the volcanic heat. Zander pulled from his pocket the note Clyden gave him the day before. Zander started to ball it up with the intention to toss it in the fire, but then he stopped. He opened the note again to read it.

  ‘Zander, if you are reading this note, I am either dead or unable to speak. Even if I am dead, follow these instructions, and Loudas will win. Right now, King Danyais will face a force of twenty thousand tomorrow. As you can see, I made a gate in the wall of Dragon Crest. It should be big enough to fit fifty horses through, side by side. When we ride through, the sun will be at our backs. I need rest if I am not dead, but I can’t leave the vicinity of the smaller gate even if I am dead, or it will seal, losing the advantage of the peephole. The larger gate is already open, and If I am dead, then the gate will remain open unless destroyed. Use the smaller gate’s peephole to watch for when the Sukkan army begins preparation for an assault. Do not worry about the other gate in Kimmer; it will look nothing more than a cliff face to the Sukkan army. We left the high ground to them on purpose so they would ignore the cliff face. Their army should take up positions down the hill not too far from where we will exit from.

  When their cavalry moves, then the time to strike will be near. Gather and brief the officers tonight on their duties and move our cavalry. Create a staging area in front of the gate for our five thousand. They must be ready to move at a moment’s notice. This is why we left the cavalry here, so they will be rested and ready. The second and most important thing, the gate must be destroyed to prevent the Sukkan army from having a direct path to the capital should we fail. Use fire. Zander, if I am not dead, then I will look forward to seeing you when I wake up.’

  “You really did have it all figured out,” Zander said to no one in particular. Folding the note, Zander placed it into his pocket. He could not bring himself to burn a piece of history.

  ***