Michael and the men around him hit the enemy in the city like a hammer hitting an anvil. All of those rift monsters that had fled, hoping that their allies had already broken through the walls and made it deep into the city, were the first to be cut down. Ollie, the lizardfolk, and all the other remaining mages sent salvos of devastating spells to land in their midst, scattering and breaking their lines even more than they had been already. Militia and Hume army soldiers peppered them with arrows as those knights that had managed to maintain their mounts or even retrieve new ones charged toward them. As they ran through them, cutting them down with longswords, and skewering them with lance and spear, Michael and all those warriors on foot charged.
There were cheers from the men and women manning makeshift barricades, throwing rocks from roofs, and even collapsing buildings to crush the larger monsters that they wouldn’t be able to beat otherwise. The entire outer edge of Lataxia was filled with bodies of the enemy and allies, and the air was thick with dust from shattered buildings and charging foes.
The enemy forces that were on the edge tried to push their way into the city, in many cases crushing their own, and when Michael and the others on foot arrived, it was a bloodbath. Those that tried to turn and fight them did so with the ferocity of cornered animals, but it was in vain. No matter how hard they fought, the group of men attacking them kept swelling, and none went down. Michael could feel spears pierce stomachs, cleavers tear through limbs, blasts of magic blow off chunks of flesh. He healed it all, even as trying to keep such an enormous amount of men standing drained him. He hadn’t hit the edges of his capabilities in a long time, but he was past that point now. The divine flames that danced across him flickered as the strain grew, but he didn’t stop. He felt good about what he was doing. His purpose was divine, and with the gods singing in his ear he wouldn’t stop unless he was killed.
They pushed into the city itself, fighting their way through barricades until they reached the point where the bulk of the enemy forces had been pushed to. The chaos of the unplanned city of Lataxia that had made it so difficult to prepare its defense, was now helping it. There was almost no single place where the enemy was able to mass its forces and properly bring its numbers to bear. Those volunteers from the city itself who the enemy had pushed past were now harassing them from the sides, able to attack and fade into streets they knew like the back of their hand. It was helped by the fact that some alleys were so narrow that while a human could fit through them, only lizardfolk could follow them.
When they joined the fighting in the city, it was already over. The rift beasts, the invaders, there was no hope of victory for them. No hope of creating a foothold and rifts, no hope of expansion, and no hope of survival. Still, they fought fiercely as their numbers dwindled more and more. There were still losses on the Hume side. Michael couldn’t save them all, as hard as he tried to.
The fighting went deep into the night until the enemy was routed completely. A few lizardfolk had escaped through narrow alleys and crevices, but they were being hunted fiercely by men and women that knew the city far better than they did. By the end of it, only the head of Michael’s mace was still burning. His movements hadn’t slowed, and didn’t appear strained, but his mind was completely blank. He’d become a machine as the fighting had continued. He struck, he killed, he healed, then he did all of it again. His body relied on the scripts his training and experiences had tattooed into him from the start, and the will of the divine was the oil that kept him moving. As he cracked the skull of a final scorpion abomination he let the light of his mace go out and he stood panting for a moment. He couldn’t feel any rifts nearby, or any major rift monsters. He was done.
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He turned to see the men and women around him. The Knight-Captain, Lance, Ollie, Aza, Blake, Laird, and dozens of other brave men and women that had been fighting at his side. He moved over to Knight-Captain Leon and removed his helm, kneeling.
“I apologize for being missing as long as I was. I got a bit waylaid.”
The Knight-Captain chuckled a bit, then laughed, and finally started guffawing even as his muscles shook from all the fighting. The laughter spread to everyone else around them, going on for more than a minute until Leon reached a hand out to Michael.
“I think your fellow Knights of Hume can forgive you this time.” He held out a hand and Michael took it, letting the large man haul him onto his feet.
“I’d like your permission to look for my wife, sir,” said Laird, his armor covered in blood and damaged to the point it likely would need to be fully replaced.
“Granted, but I don’t know that it will be an easy thing to find her,” responded Leon
Michael stepped toward him, activating his Eyes of Love and seeing the thread, strong and thick, that connected Laird to his wife.
“I can take you to her.”
Laird nodded and stepped to him. There was no reason to question the hows of something after you just watched a man turn the tides of a battle himself.
“Ollie, Leon, please make sure that Aza and his people stay unharmed.”
They nodded, and Aza gave Michael a nod.
Michael walked through alleys and streets, needing to climb over rubble or find other ways around as the thread led him in a straight line. He stopped to help a few injured, and he and Laird pulled away rubble from people or out of others' ways as much as possible. They eventually made their way to an area where a number of men, women and children were gathered. It seemed to have been a square at some point, with a statue in the center and a number of decorative sculptures, but the people of Lataxia had pulled all of them down to create more barriers and barricades. There were defenders up on the roofs, still keeping watch, and the women and children were bringing water to the injured, helping to bandage injuries, or even carrying those too tired to keep standing to somewhere they could lay down and rest.
Laird ran past Michael and straight toward a woman carrying two filled water buckets. Her arms were covered with blood, but none of it was her own. She was wearing part of a suit of armor, and her black hair was tied behind her head. She was only a bit shorter than Laird, and about the same age, with a square, but soft face that contrasted the strength she clearly had.
The moment she saw Laird she dropped her buckets and ran toward him as well. They slammed into one another, armor and all, and embraced one another with such strength and intensity that Michael could hear their metal chestplates creak. They separated from one another for only a moment so that they could press their lips together.
Michael felt an immense relief at seeing the two of them together. Two people, reunited and in love, and safe. He also felt a pang of envy as he imagined what it would be like to wrap Sara up in his arms like that again. He felt the sensation of her clutching his hand again and sighed as he clenched his fist, beginning to channel his healing to it.
He began to walk toward the injured, gently placing his golden hand on a man with a broken leg and mending it before he moved onto the next. He was tired. More tired than he even knew was possible. Maybe that was one of the costs of having so much energy. He had entirely new depths of exhaustion that he could reach.
He pushed himself anyway, pushing back blonde hair thick with sweat as he moved onto the next person. His foot hit a rock and he stumbled a bit, a young woman jumping forward to catch him.
“Thank you,” he said to her with a smile as he kept walking. Kneeling by a woman that was riddled with splinters from an explosion of some kind. As he worked he could hear the praises of the gods in his ears, but he could also hear the whispers of the men and women around him. Words of awe, and praise. Words like “hero” and “saviour”. When a woman brought him a bucket of water he drank the entire thing dry himself before thanking her and moving on to the next of the injured. There was still so much to do.
