CW: this gets a bit brutal, even moreso than chapter 19.

The Commander informed the officers of the attack three days prior to committing. The spies within Icinerenth had revealed the food shortage had started to affect the morale of the Junumianian soldiers and the citizens. More importantly, we received information that the single mage of that regiment had begun to prepare spells for a coming conflict. The more time we took, the less chance the mage would have to respond, but we still needed some time to prepare if we were to breach the elevated city.

Nestyne was insistent that none of us employ spells with which to harm, and instead rightfully fearing the potency of the mage, only prepare countermagicks and other contingencies. Without his planning, I do not know that all of the mages would have survived the battle.

For more than twenty years Nestyne had served the Moringian army, although not always as a mage. He had begun as a simple foot-soldier in his youth, and had learned magicks through eavesdropping on the preparations and practices of the mages of his regiment. In his second year of service, and in the midst of a slaughter desperate to live, Nestyne cast a powerful but destructive spell that had nearly taken his life. Many months, it took, for the young battlemage to regain his health, and never did he regain it fully.

Once he had recovered, the mages of his battalion took him in under an apprenticeship where he gained a limited understanding of the higher concepts of spellcraft, and learned to read and write. However, because of his desperate spellcast, Nestyne suffered from bouts of immense pain, and his hands constantly shook preventing him from safely casting countermagicks and spells with precise hand-motions. So, knowing proficiency at countermagicks was a futile effort for himself, the veteran battlemage became a specialist in summoning and animation of earth and wood. I can only imagine how potent a mage he would have been without his injury.

It was before the sun rose on the longest day of Sunslength that the battle of Icinereneth began. Soldiers pushed siege engines across the withered grass still dew-dropped from the night air followed closely by phanaxes carrying tall ladders. Behind them lay the archers, myself, Quatimonian and Carinon, and behind us the summoner Nestyne and the trebuchets of such a height as to tower over the eldest yew. Our dawn-lit forces inched slowly towards the flickering walls of the city, resembling more a swarm of insects drawn to flame than an army of men. The landscape, then, became filled with dreadful stillness and silence only found in places where men are buried or are about to perish as we waited for the signal to begin the assault.

It never came, for above the tallest spire of Icinerenth a bright orange mote, appearing almost as a miniature sun, emerged from the blueness of pre-dawn twilight before exploding outwards with a great force and speed. Hungry tendrils of flame raced towards the soldiers of the army, torrential rivers of flame that lit up the dried grass and immediately evaporated all of the dew. So awestruck was I from this violent and sudden flare, that I nearly forgot my duties to the men before me.

RIght before a great wave of fire would have collapsed upon and consumed the third and fifth battalions I called forth a mighty gust which both fueled and redirected the flames upwards to the heavens. The sky briefly lit with a mighty conflagration, many times brighter than the sun, before settling back into twilight. The spell had caused me to lose my balance for the rest of the fight, as I nearly fell over to the left side when I had all but finished, and I would have to spend the rest of the conflict adjusting for this. It was more important that battalions under my watch were safe.

I took a brief note of the state of the battlefield. Some of the men, none within the battalions under my charge, had been engulfed by the flames, but those fatalities were minor. One of the trebuchets had been hit by a tendril of fire that Carinon had deflected. Some of the dead grass had been set ablaze and were now smoking. Our men began to move more recklessly through the newly-set screen of smoke towards the city. The men were panicking, for they had not been given the order to charge. Nestyne said the mage would try to use fear to get men out of the range of our protection, and remembering this I tried my best to run through the burn scarred battlefield, fearful of what the next volley of the desperate mage might entail.

As the fires raged within the valley, it became apparent that we were now fighting two enemies: the army of Junumianis and the ever-growing forces of flame and smoke that was a consequence of the mage’s first volley. The tactics of the opposing force were clear: distract, whittle, and force our hand as much as possible. We were already at a disadvantage, for we were attacking the high ground. If our focus became too split, we would certainly fail to take the city.

The fire needed to be tamed, and fortunately for this we had Quatimonian. I could see in the distance Nestyne had signaled the Master of Flows, and that Quaitmonian had created a large circle of fast-flowing water around himself to quench the blaze. We would be safe from the fires, for a time. However, this meant it was now up to just myself and Carinon to provide protection against the Junumianian mage’s wrath.

All of this, the fire, and the spells, were before the battle began in earnest. As our force finally reached the torch-lit walls of Icinerenth, the sky became in swarms of arrow volley as the phalanxes began to charge the walls with their tall ladders. A mass of corpses formed at the base of the wall, just barely visible through the volleys of arrows, boulders, and receding smoke.

The siege engine was nearly to the western gate, men in each position to push the ram were falling to stray arrows, only to be replaced by the closest footsoldier who would no-doubt soon be struck by another arrow. It was not my job to protect these men from weapons, I had to keep focus on the chaos of the sky for signs of the mage. He was far more powerful than we had anticipated, and it was only until much further into our campaign did we fully grasp this mage’s ability. What I saw next taught me to fear summoners over all other mages.

Suddenly, out of the smoke and arrow-filled sky, descended two hulking stone gargoyles, their skin blacked and marbled with a glowing red, as if the two beasts had erupted from the peaks of the fiery peaks of the Hunal Islands. The fiends landed with a force that threw the soldiers of my battalion backwards. The larger one threw itself upon the crew of the siege engine, and lifted a soldier high into the air before pulling him apart at the torso. I could not hear his screams over the havoc of battle. The second gargoyle ran towards the closest phalanx, splitting it down the middle by throwing soldiers scattering over the plains, which smoldered where the fiend stepped.

The one who had destroyed the siege engine took to the air and quickly I found myself feet away from the molten creature. I had done nothing to protect my battalion from the threat, and that I had nothing I could throw at the beast. I was the Master of Subtlety, and there are few things less-subtle than flaming beasts of stone summoned by desperate and powerful mages. It was then I first understood what it was to feel Firstdread, as death stared into my eyes. One of the soldiers of the third battalion, in a squad specifically assigned to my protection, threw me aside as the creature swiped at me with its brutish arm, impaling the soldier in my stead. I could smell his organs burn. The lucky soldiers of that squad were given quick deaths.

I cast the spell of unnoticing upon myself and ran towards the archers and phalanxes, trying to think of a way to assist the men who were under my protection. Seeing the gargoyle still wreaking havoc, and that my men had begun to fall back from the hill, I knew the only solution would be to call for aid. Grabbing a spear of a fall soldier, I thrust it high, sending a wave of colors into the dawning air: the runes for Nestyne’s name, for I knew only the veteran could stop the gargoyles. We had prepared for simple summoned creatures, for there were many minor summoners in the Junumianian forces, but few at the level of spellcraft this mage possessed.

The gargoyle fighting my personal guard had flown off elsewhere, leaving only the gargoyle among the phalanx. I cowered within the brush, waiting for Nestyne to arrive. By the time I had cast the signal, thirty men had been killed by the creature, and more would fall unless my commanding officer was timely.

From behind me I heard the footfall of a lumbering, literally, lumbering beast. Nestyne had animated and was now riding one of the destroyed trebuchets as a massive and splintering four-legged beast which resembled a dragon. The groaning wooden limbs of the behemoth pierced the dry ground as it walked over the archers and into the melee with the gargoyle. I feared that the wooden creature might succumb to the flame and heat of our foe’s servant, but those fears were soon assuaged.

Hundreds of arrows stuck out of the body of the wooden dragon, seemingly impervious to pain, as it thrust a limb into the gargoyle with an impact that sounded many times larger than a split tree. The stone creature was annihilated instantly as Nestyne turned his efforts towards guiding his mount up to the gate, which the dragon also made short effort of.

The western gate breached, the forces of our army merged into a writhing swarm as we stormed through the entrance of Icinerenth. Trampled over brutalized comrades, unlucky enemies, and the dismembered limbs of forgotten soldiers as we ravaged the city. As one final effort, the mage collapsed the temple of Ghalstorin that rose above the city, and threw the rubble without caution towards the warring masses, killing the men of all allegiances indiscriminately. I still do not know for certain how the mage escaped our capture, but we never found him after the Junumianian forces surrendered to us.

I retired to my tent after the enemy had surrendered, for it did not matter if I was at negotiations. I fought vertigo for the next few days, and thought of Ynguinian who was now far to the south. What would he have thought of the slaughter that I had witnessed? What if I had not thought to cast the spell of unnoticing upon myself? What if we had not had an experienced summoner at our disposal? I most certainly would have died.

Over the next few days we looted the city for valuables. Officers were given first-take of the spoils we thought we had earned. Of course, these were items that belonged to normal citizens of our same empire. We had liberated them, and then we impoverished them. I paid it no mind back then, for it is difficult to understand the goodness of one’s actions when fighting in a war of greed and power, especially when one is young.

We offered the captured army two choices before we continued our eastward march into Junumianis: enslavement, or freedom at the cost of a removal of foot or hand, so they could no longer fight us. I do not know how many men chose dismemberment, but I know for the rest of the campaign we were followed closely by carrion birds who circled our enslaved and captured, and I know they never went hungry.