With the guards gone, it only took the wyrms an hour to push forwards and start investigating the glimmering blue walls. More and more of the creatures came as nothing rose to slay them. By the time the sun had started to set, the streets were covered in snarling silver.

The monsters slammed themselves against the barrier, tearing at it with their claws and sending ripples across the shield. The mass of wyrms stretched out as far as the eye could see, but more and more turned their attention to the blue shield as the rest of the city ran out of resources.

Arek slept through the night. He awoke the following morning to a loud bang. He jerked upright, drawing in a sharp breath as a huge ripple passed through the shield in the air far above him.

A large wyvern let out a screech of fury and wheeled about in the air, flying away before coming back for another pass. The shield rippled once more, but it showed no signs of fading.

Arek let out a sigh. He shook his head and rose to his feet. Someone had put a thin blanket over him. He folded it up and set it on the ground before standing.

“Good to see you’re okay,” Rovin said from behind Arek. The orc turned and gave him a weary smile. “As am I. It was very close.”

“Indeed,” the councilman said, letting out a weary sigh. He winced as a wyvern slammed against the shield again. “The horde is not happy. However, your group and the guards held the lines better than I ever could have hoped. I’m reluctant to even say it out loud, but if the B-ranked team arrives on time, we should make it.”

“Do you know how long it will be until they get here?” Arek asked.

“It should only be two days,” the councilman replied. “But there’s no point worrying ourselves over that now. The shield will hold for two days – either they arrive, or they don’t. It’s out of our hands. Now, come. I will take you to your companions.”

Arek followed Rovin through a thin crowd of people who watched the rippling shield with a mixture of hope and fear. The two of them wove through packed streets until they reached the true center of Red Mount – the council building.

Malissa and Ming sat on the building’s steps. Rovin trailed behind Arek as the orc made his way over to his companions. They glanced at him, grins crossing their faces.

“I thought you were going to sleep through everything else,” Ming said. A new tarp bag sat at her side. Before Arek could ask what it was, the mage reached into it and pulled out a skewer of some sort of meat. It was a golden-brown color with traces of some dark sauce on it, although Arek couldn’t tell if it was part of the dish or an unwanted tagalong from something else.

“I would have liked to,” Arek grumbled. “But it was hard with all the damn racket going on outside. Where’s Belmont?”

“He’s at the healing tent,” Ming said. “There are a lot of injured guards, and he’s helping heal them. He’s been working all morning.”

Arek let out a heavy sigh. “Those B-rankers better show up on time. It’s going to be a real pain in my ass if we put all this work into surviving and end up just getting swarmed because they showed up late.”

He sat down on the steps beside them. Malissa opened her mouth, but then she closed it and shook her head. And so, with nothing left to say, they did the only option left to them: they waited.

Time passed infuriatingly slow. For most of them, there was little to do but watch. Belmont busied himself healing the wounded guards with every waking moment. The man’s eyes had developed dark bags and he could barely stand in his armor, but he refused all attempts to get him to stop.

The shield grew fainter as time trickled between their fingers. The ripples from the monster’s attacks traveled further and the roars of the horde grew louder, but still the shield held. On the dawn of the second day, the shield was closer to translucent than it was to blue. The Happy Sunflowers joined the rest of Red Mount at the edge of the shield as they watched the sky with bated breath.

“Do you think they’ll arrive on time?” Malissa asked.

Arek shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

Belmont leaned heavily on his staff. He yawned and shook his head. “If they don’t, I’ll haunt the bastards. We’ve survived this long. We can’t just die in the final stretch.”

They fell silent once again. Hours passed by slowly, the shield growing weaker with every passing second. Small hairline cracks started to trace their way through the magical energy, crawling towards the top of the dome.

“Look!” someone yelled, pointing up towards the skyline.

Arek followed their finger to see a small dark dot contrasted against the midday sun.

“Another wyvern?” he wondered, but he knew that it wasn’t the case almost immediately after the words left his mouth.

Purple energy crackled through the sky like a miniature lightning storm around it. The dot rapidly grew in size and slammed into the city’s outer wall with a loud explosion that sent dirt and debris flying through the air.

The earth rumbled faintly beneath Arek’s feet. Dozens of smoke plumes curled into the air as fires erupted along the edges of the city. Jagged pillars of stone the size of four story buildings erupted from the ground, launching wyrms into the sky.

Cheers erupted as the crackling purple form rose back into the air. Hundreds of furious roars tore out as wyverns flapped up from around the city, flying towards the mage. There were easily several hundred of the deadly creatures.

They closed in on the figure at a rapid pace, nearly blotting out the sky around him within moments. The purple emanating out from around the mage flickered and faded as they were obscured from view by the wyverns.

The cheers abruptly stopped. Everyone watched in tense silence, but no boom of powerful magic or explosion of deadly energy rang out. For a few instants, there was only silence.

It started to rain. Blood splattered down on the town as dissected chunks of wyvern fell from the sky, painting the city red. They fell until only a single form remained in the sky – and purple energy crackled victoriously to life around it once more.